I've got a stack of books from the library but have read none of them. I've had a lack of concentration. Been hard to get hitched to any of them. Maybe this cold weekend will be better.
I'm reading Avenged by Janice Cantore right now. It's the last book in her Pacific Coast Justice series. I often "load up" on books from the Library during stressful times in my life. I find reading takes me far away from the stresses and brings refreshing to my tired spirit. Books are one of my favorite sources of relaxation.
Final getting around to starting "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. Haven't watched the movie yet, it's on my list, but wanted to do the book first. The book is very good; a page turner. Every so often I need a story that lifts my spirits.
Ann Silver is a cop's cop. As the Midwest Homicide Investigator, she is called in to help local law enforcement on the worst of cases. Paul Falcon is the FBI's top murder cop in the Midwest. If the victim carrried a federal badge or had a security clearance, odds are good Paul and his team see the case file or work the murder. Their lives intersect when Ann arrives to pass a case off her desk and onto his.... I'm reading Full Disclosure by Dee Henderson. And it's good reading.
Right now I'm reading the 2nd book in a 3 book series by Dale Cramer. The series is the epic story of an Amish Community in peril...and although the books are fiction, they are based a true story. An Amish Community in Ohio had to pull up roots and move when a law was passed in Ohio making it mandatory for every child between the ages of 6 and 16 to be in public school, regardless of religious beliefs. Five of the Amish fathers were jailed for defying this and all their children of those ages were taken from their homes and put in an Orphanage. The only way the men who get out of jail and get their children back home was for them to sign a legal paper saying they would send their children to the public school. All the fathers were upset but only one had the courage to move his family from that state so he could live his convictions. He started a Community in Paradise Valley in Mexico and this series is the story of that Community and the trials and tribulations of starting a new Amish Settlement in a land that had just ended a revolution.
Lately, I have been reading Civil War memoirs from people who fought. A surprisingly large number of people kept journals during the war, including not only officers but regular soldiers on both sides. Some were written as the war went on, while others were written during the years following the war. For the most part, the partisanship is all too obvious. In most, there isn't a lot of reflection or consideration that there might be two sides to an issue, but that's understandable. What I find interesting in the journals written by regular soldiers is the limited perspective that they have. Not being involved in the war planning and, in most cases, not even being able to avail themselves of newspaper reports, the perspective they give is of one who is in the middle of it, yet trying to guess what it's all about. This differs greatly from traditional histories, where the author has the advantage of time and information that wasn't available to the soldiers on the field. One of the ones that I read was written by a Confederate private, who had enlisted at the beginning of the war, at the age of seventeen. His account was mostly about himself and his friend, who had been only fifteen at the start of the war, and unable to enlist. A year later, at sixteen, his friend was able to get in and they found themselves together. Their account was of a regular soldier who had enlisted as a boy, caught up in the excitement of the secession, but who had quickly lost that, and simply wanted to survive and to keep his friend alive. Faced with actual war, his young friend talked about going home, but of course that would be desertion and he would be shot for that. His slightly older friend, the author of the account, didn't want to have to think of himself as a coward, but he wanted to stay alive and to keep his friend alive, so they would maneuver themselves so as not to be in the thick of the fighting. In his writing, it was clear that he was trying to find a balance somewhere between being a dead hero and a sniveling coward, and to keep his friend safe. They would try to stay away from anyone carrying the colors because they didn't live long during a battle, and the soldier closest to them was expected to pick up the colors when they went down. They wouldn't go to the rear because that would be cowardly, and they would at times find the courage to do something brave. The stories you've probably seen in movies are true, where soldiers from either side would trade things across a stream at night, while the battle was on hold. They would talk to each other across the stream, on friendly terms, trading coffee for tobacco, and catching up on news. Other accounts are written by officers who were sometimes intimately familiar with the officers on the other side, in some cases having even been roommates with someone on the other side at West Point. Several of these are available on Kindle, some free, others for a nominal charge.
I love books like that but not books about Wars so don't think I could read that. Once I read a book about pioneer women that was comprised of journals and diary entries by different women...that was really interesting and more of a woman's viewpoint about what it was like to cross the country in a covered wagon...not many survived! It took quite a few months to cross the country and you couldn't avoid the winter months, it was brutal. Packing up their wagon with just the necessities was also hard for them....they were leaving behind momentos and all the comforts they had in those days...lots of cases it was their horses that didn't make it and they'd have to hitch a ride with someone else, so probably had to get rid of even more... Suprisingly it wasn't Indian attacks but dysentery that killed most. Wish I could remember the name of the book, it's one I would read again.
When you really stop and think about it, it's hard to even imagine what they went through. They had settled in the towns on the east coast and were by those standards "comfortable" but then those that decided to go west without even reliable maps were very brave or stupid.
We don't usually hear of that as a reason, but a lot of the settlement of the West took place during the Civil War and the years following, likely by people who found the unknown to be preferable to a known war. After the Civil War, a lot of Southerners moved West because the South was occupied and times were tough. A lot of people had lost their homes and their livelihoods during the war.
I didn't know that, or if I did I forgot. The book I read only had journals from women leaving cities like Boston. I read this book about 35 yrs ago...wish I could remember the name of it.
Researching histories of towns all over the country, I have come across ones that were founded by Southerners escaping the post-war years in the South, or by Northerners who had moved west in the early 1860s. Rarely, does it say that they were avoiding the draft, but it's there, I think.
Interesting what you can find while searching for something else. Anyway, life has become so easy, you forget how difficult it was not that long ago....