Book Description: Elizabeth "Lizzie" Clouston's quietly held principles oppose those of the Southern Cause--but when forty thousand soldiers converge on the fields of Franklin, Tennessee, the war demands an answer. The Carnton home, where she is governess, is converted into a Confederate hospital, and Lizzie is called upon to assist the military doctor with surgeries that determine life or death. Faced with the unimaginable, she must summon fortitude, even as she fears for the life of Towny, her fiancé and lifelong friend.
As a young soldier lies dying in Lizzie's arms, she vows to relay his final words to his mother, but knows little more than the boy's first name. That same night, decorated Mississippi sharpshooter Captain Roland Ward Jones extracts a different promise from Lizzie: that she intervene should the surgeon decide to amputate his leg.
Lizzie is nothing if not a woman of her word, earning the soldiers' respect as she tends to the wounded within Carnton's walls. None is more admiring than Captain Jones, who doesn't realize she is pledged to another. But as Lizzie's heart softens toward the Confederate captain, she discovers his moral ground is at odds with her own. Now torn between love, principles, and pledges made, she struggles to be true to her own heart while standing for what she knows is right--no matter the cost.
My Thoughts: Quite a read about a part of the civil war few may have read or heard about.
Lizzie Clouston is a nanny on a plantation in Franklin, Tennessee in Carnton.
As the war rages the planation is taken over by the military and used as a hospital. Lizzie is soon assisting the medical doctor and helping to take care of soldiers.
She is a woman of her word and when a dying young soldier begs her to tell his mother his final words. And then there's Captain Ward who also asks Lizzie to step in and tell the doctor not to amputate his leg.
The captain doesn't realize that Lizzie is pledged to another man. And since Lizzie is a woman of her word she will not go against her principles.
A lot to be learned in they fiction read...a battle that is not well known and a battle in the heart of a woman of principle.
*From the pages of history and the personal accounts of those who endured the Battle of Franklin, Tamera Alexander weaves the real-life love letters between Captain Roland Ward Jones and Miss Elizabeth Clouston into a story of unlikely romance first kindled amid the shadows of war.
- Series: The Carnton Series (Book 1)
- Paperback: 448 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson
- ISBN-10: 0718081838
- ISBN-13: 978-0718081836
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