Echoes of Distant Thunder is a breathtaking saga that begins with the crushing Union defeat on the final day of the Battle of Chickamauga and ends with a life or death confrontation between two sworn enemies in the virgin pine forests of Northern Michigan. This is not the kind of Civil War novel we have come to expect. This book shows us the war in stunning detail through the eyes of a twenty year old artillery soldier. On the bloody fields of Chickamauga Will Castor's artillery battery is over-run by the enemy in fierce hand-to-hand combat, every member of his gun crew, including his best friend are killed and his final violent act of compassion will haunt him for the rest of his life. Caught behind enemy lines with a broken leg and unable to walk, he makes a pact with a war weary Confederate deserter and ends up falling in love with his former enemy's beautiful sister. Will Castor comes home from the Civil War a broken man. This is the story of his journey as he struggles to regain his footing in a world he no longer understands. Along the way he will work in a lumber camp and experience the rough and tumble, and often violent world of the lumberjack. Guilt and alcohol slowly consume him. Guilt from being the only survivor of his gun crew and guilt from killing a Georgia farmer and his son during the hopeless confusion of a fifty thousand man Union army in headlong retreat. When he can go no further, alone in the vast wilderness of North America, five years after the last shot of the Civil War was fired, the war for Will Castor is finally over. Echoes of Distant Thunder will make you laugh and cry. Richly detailed and elegantly written, the characters of Frank Slaughter's novel will draw you in!

Echoes of Distant Thunder: A Veteran's Story

Literature & Fiction

Slaughter, Frank P.

Genre Fiction

Arbutus Pr

“Will Castor serves in Battery D, 1st Regiment, Michigan Light Artillery, sending shells into the ranks of Confederate infantry whenever he’s ordered to do so. When his unit’s position is overrun at the Battle of Chickamauga, Will witnesses and commits ghastly horrors to survive the day. Separated from his army and incapacitated with a broken leg, he hooks up with a Confederate deserter who takes him home to Tennessee and shelters him.... Haunted by the traumas of the war, the wilds present Will with an unexpected opportunity for redemption—though it may prove to be an even greater battle than the one at Chickamauga.
“Slaughter is a fastidious writer, summoning the worlds of Civil War artillery and the 19th-century lumber industry in all their gritty details.... Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the story is its postwar period and its depiction of Will’s PTSD. The reader feels great empathy for this broken veteran, stumbling about in an era when the language for such aftereffects had not yet been established.
“An ornate, gruesome, and rigorously crafted Civil War novel.” — Kirkus Reviews

The Veteran (Castor Family Trilogy)

Mission Point Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Slaughter, Frank P.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Slaughter, Frank P.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Slaughter, Frank P.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Echoes of Distant Thunder: A Veteran's Story

The Veteran (Castor Family Trilogy)