Sneak Preview: Nostalgia–A Civil War Novel

It took awhile to figure out what came next once I published War Sonnets. I wondered if I had another novel in me. I wondered if it was worth the struggle. Once I settled on what to write I took the deep dive into research. For me that means reading and taking notes ad infinitum, then throwing out three-quarters of what I’ve amassed. But then I didn’t know how to get started writing.

Yes, it took awhile–far too long. But at last I’ve started. This time it’s about the Civil War. Once again I have an ancestor who served. Who wrote lots of letters home. A treasure trove of personal thoughts and information.

This ancestor, my great-great-great uncle, was a surgeon. His name was James Dana Benton (in the novel he’s known as Jim Banyon) and he served with the 111th New York State Volunteers from 1862-1865. (I have another ancestor who served as well, in the 10th NY Cavalry volunteers. He was my great-great-grandfather.)

Okay, so I knew the “who” and the “when.” Now the “what.” What could I write about the Civil War that hasn’t been done a hundred times? Since I wrote about the emotional toll of war in War Sonnets, I decided to do the same for this novel. I focused on PTSD–then known as “nostalgia” and barely recognized as anything more than cowardice or “malingering.”

That gives you a bit of background for novel number two: Nostalgia. Here’s the first chapter:

Chapter 1: Behind the Lines

Corporal Erskine held the badly mangled leg and tried to calm the injured soldier who lay on the makeshift operating table. A hospital steward, it was Erskine’s job to support the surgeons in any way needed. Today, that meant holding a useless limb and lying to the soldier who owned it that everything was going to be okay. As the patient succumbed to the ether-soaked rag over his mouth and nose, Erskine nodded to the doctor to begin. Minutes later, he held the unsalvageable remnant of the patient’s leg, amputated just below the knee, and dropped it on the muddy ground. He winced at the sound it made—like the thunk of a small stone in a pond, but much more ominous: The patient had a good chance of dying and there would be nothing the medical staff could do to stop it.

Erskine watched his patient. The ether would not have fully sedated him, but Erskine hoped it would be enough to dull the man’s wits—and his pain. He would have preferred chloroform, but the regiment had run out of that long ago. The patient moaned, unable to move under the straps that held him to the table. Erskine placed a hand on his shoulder, gently reassuring him that the procedure was over.

His battlefield surgeon, Captain Jim Banyon, hardly noticed the amputated limb fall. Mud and blood splattered his pant legs, becoming barely perceptible as it mingled with the blood of every other wounded soldier he’d treated today. Severed body parts had become a sight as common to him as dead branches downed by wind and rain.

His uniform was soaked with perspiration. They’d commandeered a nearby barn to serve as a surgery and a hospital, but so much dust and chaff filled the suffocating air they’d had to move outside to treat the wounded. Although the earlier heavy rain had stopped, the air was intolerably hot and steaming with humidity.

It was his first amputation of the day, but it wouldn’t be his last. By the time he finished, he’d be working by lantern light and the pile of limbs would have grown past his knees. Some patients lost only a foot, a crushed hand, a couple of fingers or toes under Jim’s care. The more severe injuries required the removal of the entire limb.

And what was the point? All that extra pain and the soldier was likely a dead man, anyway.

Jim wiped the surgical knife across his pant leg and prepared for his next patient. True, some survived the amputation itself, but sometimes he wondered why he and the other doctors bothered. It wouldn’t be the loss of the leg that would kill the amputees, it would be the ensuing inflammation and gangrene, and sometimes it wasn’t even that: some soldiers simply wanted to die.

 Damn the Minié ball! Jim spat, cursing the man who invented the weapon. It was a Confederate favorite, and the thing the Rebs liked best was the damage it did to whatever it hit. On impact, the Minié flattened, sometimes splintering. Bones shattered, tissue shredded, and too often the only thing the Union surgeons could do to save the body was to take the limb.

Jim lifted a flap of skin, covered the patient’s stub and meticulously sutured the wound, leaving enough slack for it to drain and heal. He hoped to see pus from the wound in the next day or two, a sure sign of healthy wound-healing.

This wasn’t at all what Jim had expected when he’d joined Lincoln’s Army. For Jim, being an army surgeon was a way to earn good money—something he needed now that he had a wife and a young daughter. He thought he’d learned everything there was to know about doctoring from the prestigious medical college he attended. He thought he’d be treating bullet wounds, perhaps broken limbs. Of course there would be deaths—the war guaranteed that—but the gruesome wounds, the rampant disease, the deaths from malnutrition and starvation were much more than he’d bargained for. And now there was no turning back.

That night Jim squirmed restlessly on his cot, unable to get comfortable but thankful to have his tent to himself. The unrelenting heat and humidity hadn’t eased with the sunset. His mind refused to rest; it replayed the past eighteen hours of work: the wounds, the surgeries, the growing pile of useless limbs. Unable to banish the images of the battlefield, Jim tried to remember better times. The family farm. His wife Maggie. His little girl Jessie. Medical school…

What had driven him to medical school? Of course, he knew the answer to that. He had always wanted to be a doctor like his father. But when had this relentless drive for perfection taken root and how on God’s green earth had it brought him here?

I’m sure as I go through editing this will change, but that’s the way of writing. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Stay tuned for more.