The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863
It is June 1863, and in the peaceful suburbs of West Philadelphia, two young women watch the clouds of war gather on the horizon. Margaret Hayley speaks with sharp contempt of Carlton Brand, a man who has not enlisted, whose refusal to fight marks him a coward in the eyes of a nation demanding proof of masculine valor. Elsie Brand offers a more tender judgment, seeing in Carlton something Margaret refuses to acknowledge: the possibility that courage and cowardice are not so easily distinguished. As the country hurtles toward Gettysburg, Carlton must confront what it means to be a man who fears, in a society that has no patience for fear. Morford constructs a tense moral drama where love, reputation, and self-respect hang in the balance, and where the expectations of society clash painfully with the complexities of the human heart. The novel asks a question that still resonates: what do we owe to ourselves when the world demands we become something other than what we are?
