Fiction. Western. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML:From a Spur Awardâ??winning author comes a thrilling tale of faked deaths, runaway slaves, and revenge amid the Civil War.
The only way to escape the purgatory that is the Florence Stockade is to die, so on February 3, 1865, Zebulon Hogan dies. Corporal Favour and Private Gardenhire, the only two soldiers of the 16th Wisconsin healthy enough to tote Zeb's wasted-away ninety pounds, wrap him in a dirty, stinking, and damp blanket, and carry him to the Dead House. It was typhoid pneumonia that got him, the soldiers told the Confederate guards.
Zeb is buried in the prisoners' cemetery, but the grave is shallow and it's likely that the hogs rooting around will soon be sinking their teeth into his rotting flesh. Then, young Ebenezer Chase, a runaway slave, sees the shadowy figure of a hand clawing through the muddy dirt over that grave, like it's reaching to pull anybody nearby into the deepest part of Hades. Ebenezer's first impulse is to scream, to warn the soldiers in the Stockade of what is happening, but nothing comes out of his throat.
Zeb Hogan has a mission far beyond escaping from the Stockade. He has sworn an oath to other prisoners to pursue the traitorous Sergeant Ben DeVereâ??who traded blue for gray and is now a Confederate in Vicksburgâ??and kill him. The problem for Zeb is that he knows nothing of the surrounding country and is likely to be intercepted. Ebenezer, despite being a runaway slave and no less vulnerable to capture, does know the country. Perhaps they can join forces to get where each wants to go . . .
"This is surely one of Boggs's best Westerns, an intense and suspenseful story of personal redemption set during one of the most tumultuous times in American history." â??Booklist, starred review
"South by Southwest is an engaging story with a terrific opening sequence followed by many more like it." â??Historical Novels