The Eye of Dread

The Civil War arrives like a blade through the Ballard family, and young Betty must learn to navigate a world where the fantasies that once sustained her can no longer hold back reality. As her father marches off to battle and her family fractures under the weight of loss and uncertainty, Betty's vivid imagination becomes both her greatest gift and her cruelest deception. A thread of mystery runs through the narrative: someone is not who they claim to be, and Betty's child eyes may be the only ones sharp enough to see through the disguise. Erskine writes with delicate precision about the violence of growing up, the moment when a child realizes that the stories she tells herself cannot protect her from the world's teeth. This is a novel about the cost of innocence, and whether anything survives when fantasy meets history's hard edge.