Fifteen years after the end of the American Civil War, a North Carolina widow travels to Elmira, New York, the site of an infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp, to confront the woman who may know the meaning of an engraved ring found in the pocket of her deceased husband’s Rebel uniform. The answer emerges through alternating first-person accounts from a Rebel prisoner, a Union guard, a crusading Elmira Female College student, and John W. Jones, the actual fugitive slave and Underground Railroad conductor ironically tasked with overseeing the burials of the nearly 3000 Confederate soldiers who died at the camp. Their diverse voices provide an intimate look into the build-up and conduct of the war from the passionate perspectives of those who fought for either side, those left to wait at home, and those whose very freedom depended on the war’s outcome. But their deeply held beliefs and loyalties are challenged when their fates converge in the harsh shadow of the Elmira prison camp, a place where suffering blurs the line between enemy and friend, and where empathy can turn to love.
“Mary Frailey Calland masterfully transports us back to the Elmira of the Civil War era. She provides great insight through the lives of the unforgettable characters. A powerful work of historical fiction.“
Martin D. Chalk, President of the Friends of the Elmira Civil War Prison Camp
On September 17, 1862, an explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, kills seventy-eight girls rolling bullet cartridges for the Union army. News of the catastrophe is buried, however, beneath the horrendous casualty reports coming out of the Battle of Antietam, fought on the very same day. Inspired by these two real-life tragedies, Consecrated Dust tells the wartime story of four young northerners – feminist, Clara Ambrose; soldier, Garrett Cameron; industrialist, Edgar Gliddon; and immigrant, Annie Burke – friends, lovers, and bitter rivals. In the teeming streets and factories of Pittsburgh, and on the battlefields of the Army of the Potomac, they struggle to survive, forced to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and greed. Their choices ultimately lead to their presence at both the Arsenal and the Antietam battlefield on that fateful September day, a day that reveals the true meaning of courage – a day not all of them will survive.
“Mary Frailey Calland bridges the gap between historian and storyteller, adeptly using characters to walk the reader through the times and events in 1862 Pittsburgh where life and the consequences of war collide. Rich in historic detail, Consecrated Dust is a narrative window to the past.”
Michael Kraus, Curator of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, and military consultant to the films Gettysburg and Cold Mountain.
Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and World War II, Barefoot In The Stubble Fields is the coming of age story of Maggie Fahey, the youngest daughter of a struggling Iowa farmer, sent to live temporarily with a wealthy aunt and uncle in Sioux City following the death of her mother. When the childless couple refuses to give her back, Maggie finds herself on an emotional tightrope between her two families, never fully belonging to either. Thus begins her lifelong search for a place to call home. As the nation staggers through the grim days of the Depression, Maggie is shuttled between a life of privilege in the city and the poor Irish farming community of her birth. She grows up burdened with a sense of loss and rejection, a feeling intensified by the personal tragedies of the wartime years. But one final chance at love forces Maggie to choose between her fears and her dreams. From the drought fractured fields of northwestern Iowa in the 1930s to the wartime campuses of St. Mary’s College and the University of Notre Dame, Barefoot In The Stubble Fields chronicles a young girl’s precarious journey to womanhood during one of the most tumultuous periods in our nation’s history, a solitary struggle for survival that typifies the quiet courage of a generation.