THE BLACK FLOWER: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr (Picador USA, 1998) 

Bushrod Carter dreamed of snow, of big, round flakes drifting like sycamore leaves from heaven. The snow settled over trees and fences, over artillery and the rumps of horses, over the men moving in column up the narrow road. A snowflake, light and dry as a lace doily, lit on the crown of Bushrod’s hat; when he made to brush it away, he found it was not snow at all but a hoe cake dripping with molasses. All the snowflakes were turning into hoe cakes the minute they hit the ground. The road and the field were covered in them, but nobody else seemed to notice. The boys went on marching as if nothing had happened…

MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER by Robin Oliveira (Viking, 2010)

How she came to write the book: “Five years ago I had a vision of a young woman in shabby period dress seated at a trestle table, bent over the shaft of a brass microscope fitted with a slide, a shallow candle burning under its glass stage. The candle illuminated both the object she was studying and the walls of bookshelves filled with thick volumes, specimen jars and human bones. She seemed so hungry for knowledge. Who was she, I wondered, and what was she doing by herself in that lonely place at night? What were her disappointments, and to what lengths would she go to become the woman she wanted to be? Was she loved? I became worried about her; I had to find out who she was…”

THE DISAGREEMENT by Nick Taylor (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

It is April 17, 1861 – the day that Virginia secedes from the Union and the sixteenth birthday of John Alan Muro. As the Commonwealth erupts in celebration, young Muro sees his dream of attending medical school in Philadelphia shattered by the sudden reality of war. Muro’s father sends him instead to Charlottesville, where Jefferson’s forty-year-old University of Virginia has become a haven of rogues and dilettantes. Soon, the war effort requires that medical students like Muro be pressed into service at the Charlottesville General Hospital, where the inexperienced Dr. Muro saves the life of a Northern lieutenant, earning the scorn of his peers. Late in the war, now nineteen and married to a girl he thought he knew, Muro is forced to make a choice that will shape the rest of his life. In this story of love, loyalty, and unimaginable sacrifice, a doctor struggles to balance the passions of youth with the weight of responsibility.