The Burning Land, Book 2 of the Overstreet Saga, brings the reader back to the Civil War and its aftermath, when Americans fought each other over what the nation would become—a time of adventure, excitement, opportunity, and agonizing loss.
From bestselling historian and storyteller, David O. Stewart, The Burning Land follows a turbulent romance through the tumultuous times during and after the Civil War. Richly developed characters embody the struggles that remade the nation as Henry Overstreet, a carpenter, aims up the social ladder in Waldoboro, Maine, in his pursuit of Katie Nash. But the lovers’ path runs through family tragedies and America’s bloodiest war—one fought to redeem the nation’s soul and free a people. Often separated, their quiet and devoted letters capture each other’s heart as Katie wins teaching jobs usually reserved for men and Henry serves faithfully in Maine’s legendary Twentieth Regiment. Rising to sergeant through furious battles at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, Henry’s two-week leave allows them to marry on the Fourth of July, 1864, and know a very few days of bliss.
Their trials only multiply. Katie helps nurse Henry back from a grisly battlefield wound, but he recoils from the prospect of settling back in small-town Waldoboro. Dreaming of new horizons and an expansive future, Henry uproots their young family for booming Chicago. Little goes right in the overnight metropolis, testing their love as never before.
“An intimate, sweeping portrait of a country and couple divided, David O. Stewart’s The Burning Land does what all good historical fiction should do: gives us characters to root for and brings the past so vividly to life it feels like the present. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the trilogy unfolds.”
–Louis Bayard, author of Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Pale Blue Eye
“In The Burning Land, David O. Stewart has vividly brought alive the landscapes and human spirit of Civil War-era America from the hardscrabble coast of Maine, through the battlefields of Virginia and Pennsylvania, to the chaotic postwar scramble to survive in the burgeoning city of Chicago. To the generational drama of the tenacious Overstreet family, Mr. Stewart brings a historian’s feel for the ways in which ordinary lives were shaped by extraordinary times, enriched by an unerring eye for authentic detail and page-turning prose.”
— Fergus M. Bordewich, Author of Congress At War: How Republican Reformers Fought The Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, And Remade America
“David O. Stewart has written many books, but this may be his best: a gripping Civil War novel, set in coastal Maine and with the famous Twentieth Maine Regiment, followed by an exciting account of post-war Chicago. This is a book you won’t want to miss.”
— Walter Stahr, author of bestselling biographies of William Seward, Edwin Stanton, and Salmon P. Chase
“The Burning Land is an elegantly written, heartrending evocation of a Maine family’s suffering during the Civil War and its aftermath. The battle scenes are riveting, the characters are convincingly and compellingly developed. As a Civil War historian, I highly recommend David O. Stewart’s marvelous novel.”
— Peter Cozzens, author of The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West
