Mercy in the Fire

From Chains to Courage | A Civil War Novel

This novel follows Isaac, born enslaved on an Arkansas plantation, who escapes by river and prairie to Kansas and enlists in the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Tested at Honey Springs, he marches south with Steele’s Camden Expedition and returns to the county that owned him. Ordered to torch his former master’s property, Isaac finds the planter’s wife and young daughters hidden in a root cellar. He leads them out, takes a rifle butt that costs him an eye, and is chained by a Union sergeant for “aiding the enemy.” The next night, the family he saved risks everything to cut him free. War ends; Catherine Bragg carries Hannah and the children north, and two households attempt a life beyond debts and violence. Based on real regiments, routes, and battles, the novel is a propulsive epic about courage, conscience, and the power of choosing humanity.