Gray Skies: A Civil War legend of family courage

Kirkus ReviewsSelf's debut Civil War novel fictionalizes the true story of his ancestors and their place in United States history. Alabaman Jon Self is a true American patriot with relatives who fought proudly in the Revolutionary War, but he attempts to remain neutral when the Civil War breaks out. He takes up blacksmithing to avoid the draft, but three years into the war, conscript hunters urgently need to fill the dwindling Confederate ranks. After they threaten to take Jon's oldest son, Jon signs up with the 58th Alabama Regiment, leaving his beloved Mary and their five children behind. Against his will, and caught up in something far beyond his power, Jon fights in a series of intense skirmishes, surviving alongside his buddy John Laster.