For a Georgia-based book club, A River Between Us by Jocelyn Green was a great choice! Set in the last years of the Civil War, the novel features a little known event — the capture and destruction of textile mills in northern Georgia and the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of the mill workers, mostly women and children. Even our born and bred Georgia members didn’t know about it. We all loved this book!
Cora Mae Stewart’s world collapses when Sherman destroys the Georgia cotton mill where she works and has her arrested for treason and sent North. Faced with impossible choices, she does what she must to keep a little girl safe in an unhospitable land.
Convinced he won’t survive the war, Union Sergeant Ethan Howard determines to make his death count for something. But Cora Mae gives him a reason to live. Trouble is, he’s just arrested her on Sherman’s orders, and torn her from home and family.
Sergeant Howard is the last person Cora Mae wants to forgive, and the only man who can bring her all the way home.
Jocelyn Green is a former journalist who puts her investigative skills to work in writing both nonfiction and historical fiction to inspire faith and courage.
Her books have finaled in the Christy Awards and Inspirational Readers Choice Awards, and have won gold from the Military Writers Society of America and the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association.
Complex and nuanced characters, rich historical detail and twisting plots make her novels immersive experiences. Her fiction has been praised by Historical Novel Society, Romantic Times, Library Journal, historians specializing in her novels’ time periods, as well as popular and acclaimed authors Laura Frantz, Lori Benton, Jody Hedlund, Sarah Sundin, Joanne Bischof, Julie Lessman, and more.
Jocelyn loves Broadway musicals, the color red, Toblerone chocolate bars, Mexican food, and well-done documentaries. She lives in Iowa with her husband, two children, and two cats she should have named Catticus Finch and Purrman Meowville.
Visit her at jocelyngreen.com, and receive a free gift when joining her e-newsletter mailing list at jocelyngreen.com/subscribe.
My Impressions:
What a great choice A River Between Us was for my book club. We are Georgia-based, and this novel’s setting is Roswell during the Civil War. But the events described didn’t make our Georgia-born members’ history books. Jocelyn Green brings to light the destruction of the textile mills and the subsequent imprisonment of the mill workers of northern Georgia. Can you imagine being a young woman working 6 days a week in unhealthy conditions, earning scrip for purchases at the company store, only to find yourself labeled a traitor to the Union and sent far away from home and family? That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of mill workers, mostly women and children, when Sherman’s army marched into Roswell, Georgia. The novel presents this intriguing historical event and the rest of the war experiences in a balanced manner. No side came off as completely bad or good. There were Union sympathizers among those in the South, and there were Southerners who believed slavery was evil. There were horrific acts by both sets of armies.
We loved Cora Mae and Ethan, the main characters in the novel. What an unlikely pair — a captured mill worker and a Union officer! But they had more in common than they expected, especially their faith. And June, a child protected by Cora Mae, was a great addition to the cast of characters. We all loved her too! The romance element was measured — both characters were constrained by honor and duty. We weren’t sure how the happily-ever-after was going to be achieved, but were thrilled with the outcome.
The Civil War-era is troubling part of our nation’s history, and A River Between Us is an interesting and welcome addition to our historical fiction shelves.
Recommended.
Audience: Adults.
(I purchased the ebook version from Amazon. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
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