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الاستماع والقراءة

James Reasoner

Manassas is the first book in Reasoner’s ten-volume series spanning the Civil War and describing its effects on one Southern family.

Storm clouds are approaching Culpeper County, Virginia, in early January 1861. The troublesome Fogarty brothers have been raising havoc across the countryside, and when the local lawman, Will Brannon, returns from another futile attempt to track them down, he finds the townspeople abuzz. South Carolina has seceded from the Union, and rumor has it more states will follow, perhaps even Virginia. Will enlists, but so, too, do the Fogartys. All know that men die in battle and that these deaths are never investigated.

As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms, the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it never had considered.

Lloyd James

Blackstone Publishing

Civil War Battle

Manassas

Shiloh is the second book in a ten-book series spanning the Civil War and describing its effects on one Southern family.

As the Civil War sweeps across the country, it finds the most wayfaring member of the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia, working as a wharf rat at a port on the Mississippi River. Cory Brannon, caught up in a bar fight he tried to avoid, is rescued by Captain Zeke Farrell, who offers him a job as part of his crew on the riverboat Missouri Zephyr. But as the Zephyr reaches Illinois, it is greeted by Union gunboats. The war is now on the water, and there is little chance for river commerce. When Cory learns that a Union force under Ulysses S. Grant is advancing to claim the area for the North, Cory and his crewmates must choose sides and join in the fight to see which side will control the river.

Shiloh

In early 1862, the Civil War comes within view of the Brannon family farm in Culpeper County, Virginia. The din of drilling soldiers sweeps over the quiet county seat, and another Brannon son, Mac, answers the call to arms.

The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern army, Mac is reunited with his older brother, Will, when Stonewall Jackson’s triumphant troops arrive from the Shenandoah Valley to blunt the Federal onslaught. The fortunes of the Southern army change dramatically when Robert E. Lee is made commander.

Lee’s army strikes a stunning blow to the Northern army as his legions cross the Potomac River into Maryland. When the Federals intercept the Rebels near Antietam Creek, the two brothers are brought together in the bloodiest trial of the war thus far. The air is thick with shot and shell as wave after wave of Northern soldiers are hurled upon the Southern lines grouped near the town of Sharpsburg and a river of death.

Antietam is the third book in this ten-volume series spanning the Civil War and describing its effects on one Southern family. As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms, the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it had never imagined.

Antietam

In this fourth book of Reasoner’s ten-book Civil War series, as Cory Brannon has a chance to assist the South with supplies brought in by blockade-runners and discovers his sweetheart Lucille Farrell, a sense of obligation and duty stirs in the hotheaded Titus back home in Virginia, and the Confederate cause claims another Brannon son, this one a gifted rifleman.

In early 1863, a fitful calm pervades the Virginia front until another Union commander is named. Joe Hooker leads his army into the wooded wilderness and confidently stakes his fortunes on an encounter with Robert E. Lee near the roadside inn at Chancellorsville. As the battle rushes toward them, Will and Mac Brannon witness the boldest move a field commander can make and the greatest loss the Confederacy can struggle to bear.

Chancellorsville

Vicksburg is the fifth in a ten-book series spanning the Civil War and describing its effects on one Southern family.

In the waning months of 1862, as the Union army advances closer and closer, Cory Brannon must abandon the supply train in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to undertake a vital mission for Confederate General John Pemberton, the commander in charge of Vicksburg’s defenses. Vicksburg is the key to the Mississippi River—and the future of the Confederacy—and they must not lose control. For almost a year the Federal army and navy have tried to dislodge the Confederates, but they have gained nothing—yet.

The Federal bombardment led by General Ulysses S. Grant, illness, injury, and starvation all take their toll on the defenders of Vicksburg, forcing Cory and Lucille to face decisions that threaten not only their love but also their lives.

Vicksburg

Although Stonewall Jackson was dead, Confederate moral was never higher. The victory at Chancellorsville had come against overwhelming odds, and the Union army was in retreat. In less than a year, the Federals had been pushed back from the outskirts of Richmond and, now, virtually out of Virginia.

Will and Mac, the two eldest Brannon sons, are in the ranks of the Stonewall Brigade and Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. A short bivouac allows them to visit the family farm, but almost as soon as Will rejoins his company, Jackson’s former corps marches up the Shenandoah Valley, sweeping the Union troops out of Winchester. A natural route to the North lies open, and Lee’s army heads in that direction. They eventually clash at Gettysburg.

Will, who is involved from the first day, is kept in the thick of the combat around Culp’s Hill and the right side of the Union line. Mac arrives on the evening of the second day, and he sees action with the Southern cavalry at Hanover. Both are swallowed up in the melee of the fighting, and neither emerges unscathed.

Bruised and bleeding, the Confederate army stumbles back into Virginia, leaving a fourth of their number behind on the Pennsylvania ground. News of the defeat and the massive number of casualties spreads quickly. Like thousands of families across the South, the Brannon clan in Culpeper County anxiously awaits word of the fates of two sons.

Gettysburg

For members of the Brannon clan, the action ranges from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Georgia, Mississippi, and Illinois in this seventh of ten volumes in Reasoner's Civil War series. Two Brannon sons were with Lee at Gettysburg and one, Cory, was at Vicksburg while the other, Mac, assists in protecting the Army of Northern Virginia. They still mourn the loss of another, Titus, presumed dead but actually interned in a prison camp. Titus is now determined to escape the Yankee prison camp and make his way home but he does not yet know the price of his freedom.

Meanwhile, Cory connects with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry just in time for the action at Chickamauga. Although the battle goes well for the Confederates, the scene is set for the arrival of a new federal commander, Ulysses S. Grant.

Chickamauga

The last half of 1863 has taken a toll on the Brannon family, but winter has finally forced the armies to suspend campaigning. The lull in the fighting allows Mac to take leave from Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, and Will comes home from a Richmond hospital to convalesce.

What little calm Christmas brings, however, is shattered with the sudden appearance—as if from the grave—of Titus, the son believed to have been lost to the war more than a year earlier. Though his return is joyous news, Titus is devastated when he finds his wife remarried and pregnant. Tensions escalate when he learns that his brother, Henry, is the father. In his bitterness and pain, Titus unleashes a personal war on the new family.

Will’s sense of honor soon compels him to return to duty, where his is swept into the fighting in the Wilderness. For a time, Mac is with him, but a Federal raid near Richmond propels the Confederate cavalry toward the crossroads at Yellow Tavern and destiny.

News from the war again hits hard at the Brannon farm, now behind enemy lines. Of the two brothers left there, one seeks vengeance on the Yankees fighting in the Shenandoah Valley.

Shenandoah

Following the defeat of Confederate forces at Chattanooga, the battered Rebel army, including a bitter Cory Brannon, retreats slowly toward Atlanta. A large Union army led by General William Sherman is marching to the coastal city of Savannah, laying waste to the territory through which it passes. Behind enemy lines on the Brannon family farm, Henry has been removed as sheriff, and to everyone’s surprise, Cordelia is courted by a Union officer, a Yankee she finds herself unable to hate. As Cory is trapped in Savannah, surrounded by Sherman’s marauding hordes, despair grips the Confederacy. Fractured and defeated at every turn, the nation asks itself how much longer it can continue to fight.

Savannah

The exciting conclusion to Reasoner’s Civil War Battle Series

With the conclusion of the ten-volume saga, the multiple strands of the story are woven toward their resolution. Members of the Brannon family are involved in battles spread across the country. In the Shenandoah Valley, Mac and Titus fight alongside Fitzhugh Lee. Nathan Hatcher wears the Union blue in the Dakota Territory, while in the Deep South, Cory fights against William T. Sherman and Henry rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest in Alabama.

In the spring of 1865 the war reaches its climax at a crossroads in Virginia known as Appomattox. Soon after, the war is brought home to the Brannon farm when carpetbaggers move into the South and the family must decide whether to fight or flee.