HF CivilWarTalk Listed as Source

[Library Lady]

I'm still working my way through the books that won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. I just finished reading A Distant Flame by Philip Lee Williams which won in 2004. On looking through the Author's Notes on sources to see if there was anything I wanted to add to my "read me" pile, I was surprised and pleased to find "Long Arms of the Civil War" on CivilWarTalk (online) mentioned. As far as I can tell, the author meant this thread:

Muskets, Carbines & Repeating Rifles - Long Arms of the Civil War | Arms & Artillery - Terrible Tools of War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, neither the North, nor the South was prepared to engage in a major war. Decades of relative peace had left limited stockpiles of small arms, the rifles and handguns carried by individual soldiers. As tens of thousands of men volunteered to fight alongside...

civilwartalk.com

The only problem is that it is dated from January 12, 2020. Perhaps Management reworked an older thread?

I can certainly see why that thread would have been of use to the author as the main character in his story is a young man who is a sharpshooter with Cleburne during the Atlanta campaign. Despite his young age, he was talented enough to be given a Whitworth.

For more about A Distant Flame, see the link below.

A Distant Flame - New Georgia Encyclopedia

Georgia novelist Philip Lee Williams’s A Distant Flame (2004) is about the struggle of an old man, Charlie Merrill, to make sense of his memories and his life. Williams’s most ambitious and successful novel to date, A Distant Flame received the 2004 Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War Fiction and...

www.georgiaencyclopedia.org

 

[Nathan Stuart]

The plot of 'A Distant Flame' by Philip Lee Williams seems remarkably similar in some aspects to another fictional work, 'Sharpshooter', by David Madden. The latter title tells the story of a young East Tennessee boy from a Unionist family, Willis Carr, who is captured by the Confederates and becomes a whitworth sharpshooter under Longstreet, serving in various conflicts including the Knoxville Campaign, as well as at Andersonville Prison, where a former slave teaches him how to read. The story also deals with his postwar reflections of these experiences and how he haunted by the memories.

 

[Library Lady]

The plot of 'A Distant Flame' by Philip Lee Williams seems remarkably similar in some aspects to another fictional work, 'Sharpshooter', by David Madden. The latter title tells the story of a young East Tennessee boy from a Unionist family, Willis Carr, who is captured by the Confederates and becomes a whitworth sharpshooter under Longstreet, serving in various conflicts including the Knoxville Campaign, as well as at Andersonville Prison, where a former slave teaches him how to read. The story also deals with his postwar reflections of these experiences and how he haunted by the memories.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @Nathan Stuart . The junior college library down the road and across the street has a copy. Perhaps I should give some consideration to checking it out before my card expires.

 

[Nathan Stuart]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @Nathan Stuart . The junior college library down the road and across the street has a copy. Perhaps I should give some consideration to checking it out before my card expires.

You're welcome.

Although historical fiction, and only 160 pages in length, I found this work to be engaging reading. Was particularly interested in any psychological insights provided into a conflicted individual following their extensive Civil War experiences, an aspect I believe is neglected in the general literature on the subject.