Neverhome
A Novel

I call this quiet writing - simple language with phrases full of unbelievably clear descriptions. It’s a small book, telling a big and bold story of a woman impersonating a man so she can go to war. She is strong, her husband is not, so she went to fight for the Union. Ash is physically strong, digs......more

Ghosts crowd thick in Laird Hunt’s Civil War novel, “Neverhome,” and they’re not just the shades of dead Blues and Grays. A host of literary allusions haunt this book, from “Cold Mountain” to “The Red Badge of Courage” and all the way back to Homer. But what’s most striking is Hunt’s effective rever......more

Take Homer’s time-honored classic The Odyssey and give it a twist: what if Penelope were the warrior traveling home to Odysseus? In Laird Hunt’s brilliantly conceived novel, Constance Thompson – renamed Ash – disguises herself as a man and takes on the role of Union solider in the Civil War. (Of her......more

I've read a number of novels set during the civil war, but none like this one. This tale of a woman who donned a union uniform and participated in many campaigns brought this war, with its death and destruction, into clear focus; not at the level that history books recount, but at the personal, soul-......more