On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club - The Cotillion Brigade (A Novel of the Civil War and the Most Famous Female Militia in American History) By Glen Craney. @glencraney @maryanneyarde

 

Georgia burns.
Sherman’s Yankees are closing in.
Will the women of LaGrange run or fight?

Based on the true story of the celebrated Nancy Hart Rifles, The Cotillion Brigade is an epic novel of the Civil War’s ravages on family and love, the resilient bonds of sisterhood in devastation, and the miracle of reconciliation between bitter enemies.

“Gone With The Wind meets A League Of Their Own.”

-- John Jeter, The Plunder Room

1856. Sixteen-year-old Nannie Colquitt Hill makes her debut in the antebellum society of the Chattahoochee River plantations. A thousand miles north, a Wisconsin farm boy, Hugh LaGrange, joins an Abolitionist crusade to ban slavery in Bleeding Kansas.

Five years later, secession and war against the homefront hurl them toward a confrontation unrivaled in American history.

My Review 

I am not sure whether it was the cover or the blurb that made me agree to read this book, but it makes no difference either way, as I was certainly not disappointed! This book tells the story of the Nancy Harts (who were a female militia raised in the Southern United States during the American Civil War) and of Hugh LaGrange. It is a story of both the South and North in the lead up to and during the Civil War.

Nancy begins this story as a young woman, who is desperately trying to catch the eye of Brown Morgan before Sallie Fanny Reid does, but as the story progresses, she becomes a woman and a leader, wanting nothing more than to keep her town safe. The formation of the Nancy Harts may have started with a gun demonstration that led to the death of a cow, due to bad aim, but it grew into a militia capable of standing up to oncoming Yankee soldiers. They were able to hold their ground and keep their town safe.

Hugh was so incredibly interesting to read about. Hugh joins the army and, while he is often waylaid by mysterious women, who cause more harm than good, he is also very good at his job. Something I found fascinating was reading about his tactics as he ordered his men into battle, and the beautifully crafted fight scenes made it impossible to put the book down. 

This was an enthralling read, and I loved that we didn’t just get one side of the war, but both, from the perspective of someone in amongst the fighting and someone on the sidelines, hoping that she didn’t lose anyone she loved. The fact that this was based on real people made it even more compelling, and I loved every minute of it.

Buy this Book

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Glen Craney

A graduate of Indiana University School of Law and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Glen Craney practiced trial law before joining the Washington, D.C. press corps to write about national politics and the Iran-contra trial for Congressional Quarterly magazine. In 1996, the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded him the Nicholl Fellowship prize for best new screenwriting. His debut historical novel, The Fire and the Light, was named Best New Fiction by the National Indie Excellence Awards. He is a three-time Finalist/Honorable Mention winner of Foreword Magazine’s Book-of-the-Year and a Chaucer Award winner for Historical Fiction. His books have taken readers to Occitania during the Albigensian Crusade, the Scotland of Robert Bruce, Portugal during the Age of Discovery, the trenches of France during World War I, the battlefields of the Civil War, and the American Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. He lives in Malibu, California.

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