The Daily Novel

Epilog
Tuesday June 12 1864
(Near St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi)
Megan stood on the brake as the Conestoga pushed the hefty Percherons down the steep grade toward the riverbank. The team dug in their heels. The wagon skipped from rut to rut. Megan clenched her teeth and tried to remember how to pray.
Behind [...]

Kathin dreamt she was huddled with Megan and Lainy in the stairwell. She awoke trembling. The scrap of paper in her sweaty palm was crumpled and illegible, but it did not matter. She had read it so often she had it memorized. Unlike the earlier message forwarded by North Star in September, this one had [...]

Megan shivered at the Union General Hospital east of Gettysburg. Rain trickled down the chimney pipe and hissed on the cast iron stove in the hospital kitchen. Ophelia Brown stuck a pot beneath the sagging tent top. Megan coughed and sputtered as contrary winds forced smoke from around the firebox door.
The tent flaps whipped in [...]

A few days later, Megan stared from a townhouse parlor window, feeling trapped inside a waterfall. She had had no opportunity to get outside since she and Sam buried Josh Evans in the Loren apple orchard. Most days, Mother Nature dumped water on the battlefield all night and shook herself dry by noon. Today, as [...]

***
Sam and Lance Flynn approached the transplanted regimental surgery carrying a stretcher between them.
“I don’t know what we brought this one up for,” Lance complained from his end. “He would probably have thanked us to let him lay.”
Sam said nothing. He had learned from long hours of running back and forth through drenching rain from [...]

Kathin’s half-born strength gave way to habitual appeasement as Edwin dragged her from the room. She stumbled on the stairs. She would have fallen to her knees if not for Edwin’s grip on her chignon. As he thrust her through the master bedroom doorway, she prayed Bobby would not hear them. Please God, let him [...]

“Fourth of July dawned fair and happy on all the villages of the North. There were no fireworks for the children had pledged all their firecracker money to buy vegetables for Mary Livermore’s scurvy stricken soldiers in the west. But the flags were flying. The roses were blooming. The scent of mock orange blooms and [...]

Lainy peered at West York Street through the rain runnels on the townhouse parlor windows. A Union horseman entered the Franklin Street intersection. A shot rang out, and the horse cantered northward with an empty saddle.
“No,” Lainy screamed. “No more! It’s over!”
Another Yankee on horseback raced north across the intersection. He was nearly out of [...]

Kathin had fallen into bed sometime after midnight, too exhausted to undress. She awoke near dawn expecting another marathon of cooking and baking for strangers. Something touched her, and she bolted upright. A rough hand clamped her mouth, stifling her scream. A finger slipped between her teeth, and Kathin bit it.
“Ow!” The beardless, filthy Rebel [...]

When the Confederate bombardment began, Megan ran out into the middle of West York Street and strained to see what was going on at Lee’s headquarters on the ridge. When a stray ball lodged in a wall a few houses down the street, she dashed back into the townhouse and ran smack into a pair [...]