Book Review – The Cotillion Brigade by Glen Craney @glencraney @maryanneyarde

 

The Cotillion Brigade 

(A Novel of the Civil War and the Most Famous Female Militia in American History)

By Glen Craney

Publication Date: 15th March 2021. Publisher: Brigid's Fire Press. Page Length: 399 Pages Genre: Historical Fiction.

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.

Book Rating:

📚📚📚📚📚⭐ = A book in a million

📚📚📚📚📚 = I could not put this book down. I Highly Recommend.

📚📚📚📚 = A really great read.

📚📚📚 = It was enjoyable.

📚📚 = It was okay.

📚 = Um...! 😕

My Review

The Cotillion Brigade 

📚📚📚📚📚

This is a story of two halves, the same way the American Civil War was a story of two halves. I had never heard of Nancy “Nannie” Colquitt Hill Morgan or the role she playing in protecting her town, so I was really looking forward to reading this novel.

Nancy is, I suppose, the typical Southern Belle. She is privileged, but she was also incredibly arrogant, especially when talking to Dr. Augustus Ware —she was downright rude and condescending towards him, and this did ruffle my feathers. The initial chapters of this story made it very difficult to like her. I also felt compelled to dislike her because of everything she stood for. However, for some reason, the author has shied away from the issues of slavery when talking about this character and instead he presents his readers with a woman who is determined to defend her town and those who live there. She became a formidable woman indeed, and although I found myself admiring her at times, I could not shake off the feeling that I should not like her because of what she represents. 

The author also portrays the North in this novel through the depiction of Colonel Oscar Hugh LaGrange. Hugh feels so strongly that slavery is wrong that he becomes an active abolitionist. With the outbreak of the war, Hugh joins the Union Army and his skill as a soldier brings with it recognition and he rises through the ranks. I really enjoyed reading about this character because of his strong and steadfast beliefs and his shrewdness in battle. This was a man who stood up for something that was fundamentally wrong and I admired him for that.

I did have one small issue with this novel. The character list is vast and I had to keep returning to the Principal Characters page at the beginning of this book, which of course, jolted me out of the story. However, the historical detail in the novel was outstanding. It really did feel like I had travelled through time.

This novel will appeal to readers who enjoy their novels set during the American Civil War.

*I received a copy of this novel from The Coffee Pot Book Club for review consideration.

You can pick up your copy of this book on Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Kobo, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble.

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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