A Snow Country Christmas (The Carsons of Mustang Creek #4)(47)
“My family isn’t up for this crowd. Or for Mustang Creek. This isn’t Paris or Rome.”
“No.” Raine hooked her arm through his, her eyes shining. “It sure isn’t. But I think they’ll find they prefer it here.”
He certainly did.
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author
Linda Lael Miller and MIRA Books
comes a sweeping new saga set against the backdrop
of the Civil War.
Read on for an exclusive sneak preview of
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY...
The Blue and the Gray
by Linda Lael Miller
Part One
“...entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go...”
Ruth 1:16
ONE
Jacob
Chancellorsville, Virginia
May 3, 1863
The first mini-ball ripped into Corporal Jacob Hammond’s left hand, the second, his right knee, each strike leaving a ragged gash in its wake; another slashed through his right thigh an instant later, and then he lost count.
A coppery crimson mist rained down upon Jacob as he bent double, then plunged, with a strange, protracted grace, toward the broken ground. On the way down, he noted the bent and broken grass, shimmering with fresh blood, the deep gouges left by boot heels and the lunging hooves of panicked horses.
A peculiar clarity overtook Jacob in those moments between life as he’d always known it and another way of being, already inevitable. The common boundaries of his mind seemed to expand beyond skull and skin, rushing outward at a dizzying speed, flying in all directions, rising past the treetops, past the sky, past the far borders of the cosmos itself.
For an instant, he understood everything, every mystery, every false thing, every truth.
He felt no emotion, no joy or sorrow.
He simply knew.
Then, so suddenly that it sickened his very soul, he was back inside himself, a prisoner surrounded by fractured bars of bone. The flash of extraordinary knowledge was gone, a fact that saddened Jacob more deeply than the likelihood of death, but some small portion of the experience remained, an ability to think without obstruction, to see his past as vividly as his present, to envision all that was around him, as if from a great height.
Blessedly, there was no pain, though he knew that would surely come, provided he remained alive long enough to receive it.
Something resembling bitter amusement overtook Jacob then; he realized that, unaccountably, he hadn’t expected to be struck down on this savage battlefield or any other. Never mind the unspeakable carnage he’d witnessed since his enlistment in Mr. Lincoln’s grand army; with the hubris of youth, he had believed himself invincible.
He had, in fact, assumed that angels fought alongside the men in blue, on the side of righteousness, committed to the task of mending a sundered nation, restoring it to its former whole. For all its faults, the United States of America was the most promising nation ever to arise from the old order of kings and despots; even now, Jacob was convinced that, whatever the cost, it must not be allowed to fail.
He had been willing to pay that price, was willing still.
Why then was he shocked, nay affronted, to find that the bill had come due, in full, and his own blood and breath, his very substance, were the currency required?
Because, he thought, shame washing over him, he had been willing to die only in theory. Out of vanity or ignorance or pure naivety, or some combination of the three, he had somehow, without being aware of it, declared himself exempt.
Well, there it was. Jacob Hammond, husband of Caroline, father of Rachel, son and grandson and great-grandson of decent men and women, present owner of a modest but fertile farm outside the pleasant but otherwise unremarkable township of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was no more vital to the operation of the universe than any other man.
Inwardly, Jacob sighed, for it was some comfort, however fleeting, to know that his mistake was, at least, not original.
Was the cause he was about to die for worthwhile?
Reluctant as he was to make the sacrifice, to leave Caroline and Rachel and the farm behind, Jacob still believed wholeheartedly that it was.
Surely, the hand of God Almighty Himself had guided those bold visionaries of 1776, and led the common people to an impossible victory against the greatest army on the face of the earth. In nearly a century of independence, there had never been a time without peril or strife, for the British had returned in 1812 and, once again, the nation had barely prevailed.
How, then, could he, dying or not, withdraw his faith, his last minuscule contribution, from so noble an endeavor?
So much hung in the balance, so very much; not only the hope and valor of those who had gone before, but the freedom, perhaps the very existence, of those yet to be born.
In solidarity, the United States could be a force for good in a hungry, desperate world. Torn asunder, it would be ineffectual, two bickering factions, bound to divide into still smaller and weaker fragments over time, too busy posturing and rattling sabers to meet the demands of a fragile future, to take a stand against the inevitable rise of new tyrannies.
No, Jacob decided, still clearheaded and detached from his damaged body, this war, with all its undeniable evils, had been fated from the day the first slaves had set foot upon American soil.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...