|
When Robey Childs's mother had a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting
in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable. She instructs her only child to
retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home. At fourteen,
Robey is ill-prepared for such a journey, but with a sense of adventure he sets
off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray
on the other. However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's
destiny --- a coal black horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector.
As they plunge into a landscape of death and destruction, Robey, cloaked in the
invincibility of youth, ventures dangerously close to battle and witnesses acts
of terrible violence and inhumanity. And slowly the horrors of war, the truth
of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy
into a warrior as brave and as mighty as the coal black horse.
In the tradition of The Red Badge of Courage, Olmstead has created a brutally honest
portrait of what war does to man and how it allows men --- even inpels them ---
to love what they should hate.
Algonquin Books
$22.95 (U.S.)
hardcover
5-1/2 x 8-1/2
ISBN: 1565125215
Release Date: April 10, 2007
|
|