When orphaned 16-year-old private James Edmund Pease joins the G Company of the 122nd Regiment, New York Volunteers, he is just in search of a hot meal and a decent pair of boots. Then Pease is ordered by a commander to keep an “honest and accurate” written record of experiences for the company during some of the most brutal battles of the war. At first, Pease is unsure what to record. Slowly, however, he becomes comfortable with the responsibility and begins to find solace in the task as he writes of the large and small. He not only chronicles the boring days, bad coffee, and the fear and terror of war but also his own terrifying adventures lost behind enemy lines.
Based on actual Civil War diaries and rigorous research, Jim Murphy has fashioned compelling historical fiction that captures both the glorious and mundane in a soldier’s life along with the nobility and the horror of the Civil War.
“James’ account captures the tedium and drudgery of day-to-day life in the infantry, the confusion and terror of battle. Murphy bases this [fictional] journal on real diaries of actual Civil War soldiers. A solid addition to a popular series.”
—School Library Journal
“In a journal that evolves in detail and eloquence as Peace matures, Pease’s unassuming personality keeps him a vivid, accessible narrator throughout.”
—Booklist