In Harper’s Shiloh the group of people gathered around Harper must overcome person conflicts with each other, internal conflicts, and their battle fears to become an effective team which battles through the disastrous first day of the Battle of Shiloh.
James Harper, Gustav Magnusson, Katie Malloy, and Johnny Cooke have arrived at the campsite of the First Iowa Mounted Infantry outside of Adamsville, TN. In a show of the continued distain in which the Monroe, the commanding officer holds him, Harper is assigned the meaningless job of Assistant Quartermaster. Never the less, inquiries by the army’s spy-master force Monroe to promote Harper to captain, as was planned prior to the battle where Harper was captured in Book 1. Word comes that the Rebels are “up to something” and Porter, the 1st Iowa’s executive officer, sends Harper with a score of men to raid into Confederate territory and learn more information. The raid is successful and Harper returns with the desired information, prisoners, and pistols to secretly arm the Iowa soldiers against Monroe’s will. Upon his return Harper notes the ill-will growing between Katie and Magnusson. Harper fends-off Eleanor’s attempt to return Katie to the brothel.
When the camp hears cannon fire to the south, Porter sends Harper ahead with the scouts to hold a key bridge along the rout of march. Harper links up with the flank of the Union army and fights off one attack before Monroe arrives with the regiment. The Rebel attack forces the regiment to fall back and hold a vital ridge. Monroe gives Harper command of a company of stragglers rounded up from other regiments and sends them to support the advanced skirmishers under McKinsey. They are too late and McKinsey’s company, including Magnusson, is overrun. McKinsey severely wounded. Harper’s men beat two Rebel attacks but are surrounded when the regiment falls back without them.
The Rebels send a flag of truce and demand Harper surrender. When Harper relays the message, McKinsey orders his company to accept the offer. Harper refuses to surrender his stragglers. Sergeant Featherstone, Harper’s former First Sergeant surreptitiously accelerates McKinsey’s death, leaving Harper in charge. They do not surrender and the final 125 pages describe the resulting battles and how Harper’s brains, courage, and force of will motivate the men to find through until relief arrives.
Katie Malloy becomes Harper’s ward and aide in the camp but is ostracized by the women and ridiculed by the men. Her only safe haven is in the campsite of Sergeant and Sarah Featherstone and among the men of Magnusson’s squad who have heard how she escaped Paducah. In the cold light of reality, the wheelchair-bound Magnusson turns resentful of Katie, blaming her for the injuries which seem likely to force him to return to Iowa. Instead Katie gravitates towards “Wrangler” Eberhart for friendship. This increases Magnusson’s anger through jealousy. Katie’s former employer, Eleanor, shows up wanting the army to return Katie to work in the brothel. With Monroe not in camp and Harper on the raid, the officers refuse. Eleanor threats to return with an order from Monroe. Eberhart is hit by lightning during an all-night thunderstorm and Katie comes to believe that God is punishing her for running away. When Eleanor returns, though, Katie steals a horse and runs away.
Magnusson, who has recovered enough to mount a horse, violates orders and searches for Katie and the entire squad comes along. They find Katie and she is overwhelmed by their kindness. The men return to camp while Katie and Magnusson continue to hide in the woods to avoid being forced into the wagon train returning to Iowa. Instead, they follow behind the regiment into the battle. Katie falls behind and, overcome by physical terror at the sounds of the cannons, she leaves Magnusson and hides. While hiding, a family of foxes impresses her with their courage to protect the young in their den. Inspired, she attempts to chase after the regiment but is captured by Rebels instead.
She spends the rest of the day treating Rebel wounded. The Confederate orderlies put her to serious work and do not ridicule her, as the Iowans did. She contemplates remaining with these Texans instead of finding her way back to Harper and his men. However, when she discovers that wounded Yankees captured by the Rebels were left to die from exposure, she runs away. She makes her way through enemy lines protected by a thunderstorm, nearly giving up hope but eventually succeeding.
Featherstone sets her to work treating the Union wounded by herself. When the Rebels overrun the cabin holding the wounded, she must use her dagger to protect the men, killing one man and wounding another. As the battle rages around the hospital, Katie sees a wounded Magnusson through a window, about to be bayoneted. She shoots the Rebel. After the battle is over, Katie forces Cooke to help her search for the missing Harper. With help from her spirit friends, she finds him. Thus, the girl nobody wanted rescues both Magnusson and Harper.
Magnusson begins the story in a dark place because his wounds may force him to go home. Also, he is unsure how to deal with his feelings towards Katie while he feels obliged to a girl back home. He acts out against Katie, whom he blames for his injuries. He disobeys the doctor to go on the raid with Harper where, full of repressed anger, he abuses a Rebel corpse. The raid aggravates his wounds and the doctor confirms the order that he return home. When he sees Katie becoming friendly with Eberhart he displays some jealousy. When Katie runs away from Eleanor, he searches for her. During the final battles, Magnusson steps into his natural leadership role as Harper's and Featherstone's assistant.
Harper is once again the daring, brash officer fans have come to love in this final installment. Between his efforts to join the fighting, and his compulsion to protect Katie from the harsh reality of camp life, he’s every bit the heroic Union soldier. Meanwhile, Magnusson is fighting his own demons, torn between his attraction to Katie and his fears that a former prostitute may not fit into his family’s staunch Quaker beliefs, and the physical injuries he received after rescuing Katie from her past life are interfering with his military aspirations. Gabhann skillfully dramatizes the interpersonal conflicts of his main players, adding a depth to the story that makes this more than just bloody, convincing battle setpieces, and the supporting characters are rich in their own right—particularly Sarah Featherstone, a First Iowa sergeant’s wife, who shows as much spirit as her battle-hardened husband.
Though the ending may feel somewhat neat given the complexities of the characters—and the war and its aftermath—Gabhann gives readers satisfying closure while honoring the brutality of the war itself. They don’t write them like this anymore: sweeping, dramatic, alive with blood and soil, balancing what it would have felt like to be there with the urgent question of what it all meant.
Takeaway: A Civil War captain faces his ultimate test in this battle-hungry novel.
Great for fans of: E.L. Doctorow’s The March, Bernard Cornwell’s Battle Flag.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
Lt. James Harper and his men are thrown into one of the bloodiest battles in the American Civil War in this, the final volume in Gabhann’s trilogy of historical novels.
Lt. Harper has finally rejoined his First Iowa Volunteers, along with Corp. Gustav Magnusson and nurse (and erstwhile prostitute) Katie Malloy. His new assignment—assistant quartermaster—is once again unbecoming to the highly experienced former deputy federal marshal, prison escapee, and spy for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. It’s campaign season, and the Union Army has pushed deep into Tennessee. After a surprise promotion to captain—which seems to displease most of the men in his battalion—Harper is placed in an administrative position that he hopes, as ever, to parlay into a battle command. Luckily for him, the proximity of the enemy means he doesn’t have to wait long. Magnusson is in a wheelchair after injuries he sustained helping Katie flee her brothel, which prevents him from riding with his skirmishers. He’s beginning to wonder whether rescuing Katie was worth all the trouble. Katie is glad to be free but still terrified of reprisal from her old colleagues. As Harper and Magnusson chafe against their new roles, the inevitable conflict with the nearby Rebel soldiers—who have already drawn Union blood—looms on the horizon, threatening to shatter whatever temporary safety they have found. Gabhann writes with his typical blend of blood, grit, and wry humor: “Silence filled the tent punctuated by the rumble of the distant canons. It was times like these that war seemed surreal to Harper—how the movements and assaults of thousands of men could be understood and planned by three men hunched over a map.” The author writes well about battle, and the novel plays to that strength. Furthermore, the final storylines for Harper and his companions provide the necessary emotional context for the conflict, as well as supplying satisfying conclusions to their character arcs. While the pacing occasionally bogs down, particularly in the book’s first half, this is the strongest novel in the trilogy.
An appropriate and high-stakes conclusion to a Civil War saga
Read further stories of Jamie Harper, Katie Malloy, and Gustav Masnusson in the other books of the Shiloh Trilogy: Harper's Doenlson and Harper's Rescue.
