The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

In the bitter winter of Civil War America, a boy named Job Parshall discovers a handmade ring in the frozen earth and begins a chain of events that will force him to confront the human cost of a nation tearing itself apart. Mose Whipple has deserted the army, not from cowardice but from a desperate need to reach his dying father before it's too late. As Job navigates the stark landscape of upstate New York farms and meets men broken by their choices, Frederic paints an unflinching portrait of ordinary people caught in war's moral quagmire. These are stories where desertion is neither heroics nor shame, but simply what happens when a boy loves his father more than his cause. Written in the late nineteenth century but radiating a raw, modern authenticity, this collection reveals what history books omit: the intimate tragedies, the impossible choices, and the quiet humanity that persists even when nations go to war. For readers who seek Civil War fiction that refuses to romanticize or simplify, who want to understand what it meant to be a person and not a soldier.