What was it like to live during the Civil War? Not only for soldiers, but for their wives and children, mothers and fathers, sweethearts and friends? How did people, North and South, cope with four years of fear and misery, death and destruction?

In Voices from the Civil War, twenty-six men and women, black and white, young and old tell their stories. Grounded in historical fact, these fictional characters relate how they struggled to survive the greatest conflict in America’s history.

Among the voices are an Alabama man who fought for the Union, a newly emancipated slave who refused to leave the plantation of her life-long bondage, a woman who lived in a cave with her starving family during the siege of Vicksburg, a soldier who survived the nightmare of captivity in a POW camp, and a woman who secretly turned to prostitution to support her disabled veteran husband and their child.

“Combining a creative imagination with an in-depth knowledge of the Civil War, George J. Bryjak has molded diverse characters of the era and breathed life into them. In authentic voices, they tell us of the horrors and heartaches, the suffering and sadness of America’s bloodiest conflict. Their stories range beyond standard accounts of great armies and battles and generals to intimate terrain – the individual, personal tales of everyday people caught in a cataclysm.”
Mark H. Dunkelman, author of War’s Relentless Hand: Twelve Tales of Civil War Soldiers