Souls of Lions
A Novel
by
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"I don't know," Walsh said, "I feel cold sweat running down my ribs. My legs are weak and my mouth is so dry I can't spit. I'm shaking all over. My hair is bristling. I've got a bad feeling about this. A lot of us are gonna die It ain't worth it."
George said, "My mouth is parched, too. But what can we do? We can't turn tail. I reckon it's our turn. If we don't do our duty we'll abandon our honor. How will we ever get it back? It's too late to worry about winning or losing. We've got our duty and that's all we've got. There's no escaping it."
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About the Book
It is November of 1864, Major General William T. Sherman is about to lead his army of sixty thousand veterans into the heart of the Confederacy. It is the final, excruciating year of a war turned increasingly brutal and desperate. The men of the maligned and ill-fated Confederate regiment known as the Fiftieth North Carolina look alike. Their faces are dark with smoke, their ribs protrude like barn rafters, and their uniforms are an assortment of filthy rags indiscriminately liberated from Union and Confederate dead. Among these soldiers are George Hawkins and his brother, Walsh, unwillingly caught in the midst of a brutal war. As the regiment begins a four-hundred-mile death march from Savannah, Georgia, to Bentonville, North Carolina, George finds himself caught between his sense of honor and duty and his knowledge that they are fighting for a cause that is all but lost. Still, he takes consolation in doing in his duty and in his love of a woman—a refugee he encounters during the chaos of the Confederate retreat. Souls of Lions is a tale of uncommon courage, heroic sacrifice, and flawed humanity amid great suffering in the swamps of North Carolina as two indifferent Confederate soldiers are transformed in the last violent months of the Civil War.
About the Author
R.E. Mitchell is a Civil War scholar who earned degrees in international relations and economics as well as a master of arts degree in history. He lives in western Kentucky near a nature preserve and close enough to Kentucky Lake to see an occasional eagle.