A Distant Flame

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2011
• Leaves: 322
• Edition: Reprint
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

A young Confederate sharpshooter, Charlie Merrill, has already suffered many losses in his life, but he must find a way to endure—and to grow—if he is to survive the battles he and his fellow soldiers face in July 1864 at the gates of Atlanta. From the opening salvos on Rocky Face Ridge in northwest Georgia through the trials of Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain, Charlie faces the overwhelming force of the Union army and a growing uncertainty about his place in the war.Framed by a story that finds the elderly Charlie giving a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta, A Distant Flame portrays love, violence, and regret about wrong paths taken. With an attention to historical detail that brings the past powerfully to the present, Philip Lee Williams reveals Charlie’s journey of redemption from the Civil War’s fields of fire to the slow steps of old age.

✦ Table of Contents

Prologue......Page 14
Winter, 1864......Page 22
July 9, 1861......Page 29
July 22, 1914......Page 34
April 19, 1864......Page 39
July 26, 1861......Page 49
July 22, 1914......Page 56
April 20–May 8, 1864......Page 60
July 27, 1861......Page 72
July 28, 1861......Page 76
May 8–13, 1864......Page 81
July 22, 1914......Page 96
August–September, 1861......Page 101
May 14–19, 1864......Page 110
July 22, 1914......Page 129
October–December 1861......Page 136
January–March, 1862......Page 144
May 22–31, 1864......Page 153
May 16, 1862......Page 179
June 2–26, 1864......Page 185
Summer and Fall, 1862......Page 204
July 22,1914......Page 213
Winter, 1862–1863......Page 218
June 27, 1864......Page 230
July 22, 1914......Page 239
July 21–22, 1864......Page 247
July 23–September 1, 1864......Page 264
July 22, 1914......Page 278
July 22,1914, 5:00–5:30 P.M.......Page 284
July 22,1914, 5:45–6:30 P.M.......Page 289
July 22,1914, 6:30–9:30 P.M.......Page 297
July 22,1914 9:30–Midnight......Page 310
November 1918......Page 314
Author's Note......Page 318