New Releases by Howard Bahr

A “sweeping, cinematic story of rebellion, loyalty, revenge, and reawakened romance” set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War (The New York Times Book Review). A New York Times Notable Book The last time Gawain Harper saw Cumberland, Mississippi, he was heading off to fight for the newly formed Confederate States of America—driven not by the cause that motivated so many others, but by love. The father of his beloved, Morgan Rhea, refused to allow her to be courted by a man who would not take up arms to defend the South. So Gawain joined the Mississippi Infantry—and now, three nightmarish years later, he is coming home. But postwar Cumberland is not the place Gawain so fondly remembered. An occupying force of Union soldiers keeps uneasy watch over the townspeople, including an erstwhile slave hunter and an albino gravedigger known as Old Hundred-and-Eleven. Meanwhile, a bloodthirsty former Confederate officer named King Solomon Gault is organizing a secret militia to drive the occupiers out and bring the entire region under his ruthless control. Before Gawain can marry Morgan and build their new life together, he must return to the world of violence and turmoil he has been so desperate to escape. With “complex, well-crafted, often beautiful prose” (TheSeattle Times) and “a cast of characters worthy of a Larry McMurtry novel” (Newsday), The Year of Jubilo is a stunning achievement from the award-winning author of The Black Flower and The Judas Field.

The author of The Black Flower “re-creates [a] seminal moment in American history with prose that is vivid, unflinching, and often incantatory” (TheWashington Post Book World). A Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year and Winner of the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction Cass Wakefield left the bloodshed of the Civil War behind him twenty years ago and intends to live out the rest of his quiet days in his hometown in Mississippi. But when a childhood friend asks him to travel with her to Tennessee, he has no choice but to go along. Alison Sansing has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wants to recover the bodies of her brother and father before she dies. Cass fought alongside Alison’s loved ones in the disastrous Battle of Franklin and helped to bury them where they fell. Joined by two of his former comrades-in-arms, Cass guides Alison through the heart of the still-devastated South. Along the way, memories of the war emerge with overwhelming vividness, thrusting Cass back into the terror and exhilaration of the battlefield. At their journey’s end, the group faces a painful reckoning between a past that refuses to die and a present still waiting to be born. “A beautifully wrought novel that deserves a wide audience,” The Judas Field is the “eloquent and fearless” final chapter in a Civil War trilogy that began with The Black Flower and The Year of Jubilo (Los Angeles Times).

The acclaimed author of "The Judas Field" offers this beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads. Bahr re-creates this seminal moment in American history with prose that is vivid, unflinching, and often incantatory ("Washington Post Book World").

The story of a young Confederate soldier and the nurse who helps him after he is injured and the romance that the war threatens to take away.

In December 1865, determined to keep the two white children in his care out of the local orphanage, Isaiah, a freed slave, takes them from Memphis to Cumberland, Mississippi, to find a new home with their uncle, now crippled and impoverished.

Collection consists of a prospectus for Bahr's 1987 publication Home for Christmas: A Story of the South.