This Scorched Earth

February 15, 2018

On the eve of the American Civil War, Philip "Doc" Hancock, a newly minted surgeon, travels home to his family in Arkansas: his Paw and Maw; his brilliant scholar brother, Butler, a rising in influence in the state government; his beautiful teenage sister Sarah, eagerly waiting to be introduced into Little Rock society, and his youngest brother Billy, a hunter. But the war changes the dreams and fates of the Hancock family. In alternating chapters the siblings provide a perspective on life before, during, and after the Civil War. Seeking escape from the horrors they experienced during the war, they all eventually move west. VERDICT Through vivid scenes of combat and dynamic characters, best-selling author Gear (writing as W. Michael with his wife, Kathleen O'Neal Gear) has penned a gripping and epic historical novel. Civil War buffs will eagerly follow the Hancocks from the battlefields and homefront to the bars, brothels, and railroad towns of the West.--Emily Hamstra, Seattle

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018
Gear ventures into new territory, taking a break from the Native American series he coauthors with his wife, Kathleen O'Neal Gear. Fast-forwarding hundreds of years and tackling an entirely new subject, he spins the saga of a frontier family caught in the throes of the Civil War and irrevocably changed by the twists and turns the hostilities wreak upon their individual and collective lives. As the Hancocks of western Arkansas wrestle with moral, physical, and spiritual hardships and dilemmas, Gear paints a gritty, often brutal portrait of the war and its aftermath. Though the four Hancock siblings?Philip, the doctor; Butler, the scholar; Billy, the hothead; and Sarah, the resilient beauty?all have ringside seats to the horror show that is the Civil War, they each deal with their experiences and the ensuing physical and psychological battle scars in radically different ways. Gear, an archaeologist and historian, brings one of the saddest chapters in U.S. history vividly to life and invests the gripping narrative with identifiable characters and enough authentic detail to satisfy dedicated Civil War buffs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)