R. E. Mitchell

Souls of Lions: a Novel R. E. Mitchell

It is November of 1864, Major General William T. Sherman is about to lead his army of sixty thousand veterans into the heart of the Confederacy. It is the final, excruciating year of a war turned increasingly brutal and desperate. The men of the maligned and illfated Confederate regiment known as the Fiftieth North Carolina look alike. Their faces are dark with smoke, their ribs protrude like barn rafters, and their uniforms are an assortment of filthy rags indiscriminately liberated from Union and Confederate dead. Among these soldiers are George Hawkins and his brother, Walsh, unwillingly caught in the midst of a brutal war. As the regiment begins a fourhundredmile death march from Savannah, Georgia, to Bentonville, North Carolina, George finds himself caught between his sense of honor and duty and his knowledge that they are fighting for a cause that is all but lost. Still, he takes consolation in doing in his duty and in his love of a woman-a refugee he encounters during the chaos of the Confederate retreat. Souls of Lions is a tale of uncommon courage, heroic sacrifice, and flawed humanity amid great suffering in the swamps of North Carolina as two indifferent Confederate soldiers are transformed into the last violent months of the Civil War.