I found the title A
Thousand Shall Fall to be very ominous (it still gives me shivers), and why
shouldn’t it be? This book takes place
during the darkest part of the history of the USA, the Civil War.
It starts off when Carrie Ann Bell, a sassy, independent
barmaid/aspiring journalist receives a letter from her younger sister Sarah
Jane informing her that she has run off with a peddler. Sarah Jane is only fifteen, and Carrie Ann is
determined to find her and bring her back home before she completely soils her
reputation forever. That resolve is
strengthened when her emotionally and mentally unstable mother tells her that
she cannot return home until she brings Sarah Jane back. Disguised as a Union Soldier she sets out
across Shenandoah Valley to find her sister.
Enter, Colonel Peyton Collier, a Union officer whose arm
Carrie Ann once sutured when no one else would help a Yankee soldier. Peyton is a kind, gallant young man, and once
he learns what Carrie Ann is up to he arrests her so she that she cannot follow
through with her crazy plan of tramping across Confederate controlled land
dressed as a Union officer and consequently getting herself killed. However, since he cannot very well keep her
at the Union camp against her wishes without actually filing charges against
her, he sends her to stay with his Aunt Ruth as a hired companion hoping that
perhaps Aunt Ruth will be able to keep her out of trouble... boy was he wrong…
I must admit that I found the first one hundred and thirty
pages of this book to be rather slow; but, after you get past that, the story
certainly picks up. I couldn’t put the
book down, and read almost the entire second half of this book in one
afternoon. Whew! Then I went back and reread the ending…
twice, just cause I liked it.
My thanks go to The Book Club Network, Inc. for providing me
with a copy for an honest review. The
opinions are my own.
Reviewed by Nicki
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