Within the Enemy's Lines
Caught between two flags and one family. Young Cornelius Passford has served in the Confederate army, but finds himself standing on his Union uncle's doorstep in New York, where Captain Horatio Passford waits with questions about why no letters have come from Corny's family. The war has torn America apart, but it has also torn this family in two. As Corny navigates the awkward tension of his uncle's parlor, carrying the weight of his Confederate service and desperate for connection to family on both sides, the novel explores what it means to belong to a nation at war with itself. Oliver Optic crafts an adventure that uses one boy's impossible position to examine the human cost of civil conflict, where love for one's family and loyalty to a cause can exist in the same heart, tearing it apart.
