Bullets flew, cannons roared…
…but there was something much more insidious that stalked the battlefield, and Jim had no idea how to treat it.
Dr. Jim Banyon, an ambitious Civil War surgeon, confronts the brutal realities of battlefield medicine. His initial quest for glory gives way to a moral crusade as he recognizes the unseen psychological wounds of war, which the army dismisses as cowardice. Forced to choose between his career and his conscience, Jim must defend the broken soldiers nobody else will, a decision that will cost him everything but his own humanity.
The heavy rain had stopped, but the air was intolerably hot and steamy as Dr. Jim Banyon steadied what was once a functioning leg.
“It’ll be okay. I promise,” Jim lied. Shattered by an enemy bullet, the man’s tibia and fibula stuck out like splintered branches, the flesh twisted like a wrung-out dishcloth. The surrounding skin was a bloody, shredded fringe. There was nothing to do but amputate.
The young soldier, who probably lied about his age when he enlisted, lay sprawled across the weathered barn door set on wobbly sawhorses, under a canvas canopy that provided little protection from the elements.
“Ready?” Dr. Larssen, the head surgeon, absent-mindedly stroked his graying beard. His hair, the color of freshly cut straw, fell in his face as he bent over the patient. He was a tall, slender man. Pale blue eyes confirmed his Scandinavian roots and suggested an innocence he’d lost long ago…
Order Online
Or visit your local library or bookstore to order
The Author
Socials
Praise for Nostalgia
“…an enlightening historical novel that uses the Civil War as both a setting and a psychological landscape where the battlefield is not only a place of physical violence, but a place where moral conviction, empathy, and sanity are tested to breaking point. While framed as a traditional war narrative, the book quickly reveals itself as a far deeper exploration of the mental cost of war, the limits of medicine, the human struggle to find purpose after immense suffering. It also explores the invisible wounds now understood as PTSD, a condition that was once dismissed as cowardice or a debilitating homesickness clinically called “nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia” will particularly appeal to those who believe the true cost of war is tallied not in territory gained, but in the shattered nerves and haunted silence of those who fight. Willey’s novel is a formidable achievement, a story whose characters, with their struggles, failures, and small, hard-won resilience, feel less like figures from a history book and more like people one has come to know, and to mourn for long after the story ends.”
– The Historical Fiction Company
.
Susannah Willey Writes 