Chenneville by Paulette Jiles, John Chenneville was injured near the end of the Civil War and was hospitalized and unconscious for almost a year. Upon returning to his family land north of St. Louis, he learned that his only sister, her husband, and new baby had been brutally murdered by Albert Dodd, a deputy sheriff in southern Missouri. In Jiles’ characteristically poetic prose, she illuminates the landscape and makes every inch of the recovering Chenneville come alive. When he sets out for Texas to seek revenge on Dodd, he meets an engaging telegrapher and others wronged by the evil miscreant. The writing and characters are spectacular, but the quick plot resolution at the book’s end left me wanting more.

Paulette Jiles is a master storyteller. Having read NEWS OF THE WORLD, I was excited to read CHENNEVILLE The first half of the book did not disappoint! Her vivid descriptions of John Chenneville’s recovery from a head wound in a Union hospital at the end of the war made me feel like I was there. When John returns home he discovers that his sister and her family were brutally murdered. He spent a year getting well before he visited his sister’s farm and prepared to find and avenge their killer A.J. Dodd. Chenneville’s first several stops were along the telegraph line and Jile’s writing made me feel like I was there. Her descriptions of the land and stories of different people recovering from the Civil War made me feel like I was there. I did feel the story started to drag during the last half of the book. Some parts could have been left out to spend more time on the ending which was almost like an afterthought. I would also like to have seen an epilogue that takes place ten years later. My thanks to William Morrow for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.
3.5 stars.

News of the World is one of my favorite books, but I was a little less enthralled by the author’s more recent Simon the Fiddler. Happily, this book brought me back to the many things I loved about News of the World. Jiles is a beautiful writer, and in this book the pace is slow, but never dull.

John Chenneville is a Union soldier who suffers a severe head injury. After a long convalescence, he regains his memory and returns home, only to find the place neglected with only an elderly servant remaining. He then learns horrible news about his sister, and he sets out on a quest to avenge his family and rid the world of her killer. But to do that he needs to give up his home – again – and he’s likely to lose his life or his freedom in the process.

Chenneville is determined and brave; he’s kind, with a strong moral code and a deep longing for companionship. He’s also obsessed. He cleverly tracks down clues and follows the whereabouts of his target step by step. As he does, he learns more about the kind of man he’s pursuing, and this may cost him even more, putting even the friends he makes along the way at risk.

Jiles’ writing is direct, yet she makes her setting so vivid, you feel like you can see, smell, and hear everything she’s describing. She also has a way of making you feel deeply for even her minor characters. Even the ones you only encounter once are memorable.

He walked in a swinging route step to the south, bent on murder. The road stayed to the valleys when it could, and when it came up over a ridge he could see the mountains pouring off southward. The Red River Valley was straight south about a hundred miles, and by that time the earth would have spilled out flat as it came to the shores of that treacherous river. Paulette Jiles, Chenneville

As the story progresses, we come to know and care about Chenneville. We see him first when he barely knows who he is, and through his travels and his quest he learns more about himself and the things in life that are most important. We also see the destruction and unrest created by the Civil War. Some are struggling to survive, others are taking advantage of the chaos.

For anyone who likes a good journey novel, I highly recommend this. If you haven’t read Jiles before, her writing is slow-paced and very descriptive, so I wouldn’t read it if you’re looking for a thriller. If you loved News of the World, definitely give this one a try.

Note: I received an advanced review copy of this book from NetGalley and publisher William Morrow. This book was released September 12, 2023.

I first became acquainted with this author when I read News of the World, which was excellent! She is such a gifted writer and her descriptive writing style allows you to vividly imagine the settings. Her character development is superb! This story takes place at the end of the Civil War and follows the life of John Chenneville, a Union soldier, as he recovers from a traumatic brain injury he received in the war and slowly makes his way back home only to receive the devastating news that his beloved sister and her family have been murdered. He then dedicates the next year to rebuilding his strength and coordination so that he can hunt down the man he suspects killed his sister.
Overall I did like this story, however I found it to be extremely slow moving at times. I often found myself skipping ahead a few pages just to get to a more exciting place. I was also somewhat disappointed in the ending.
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5

A beautifully written book that fits into the same post Civil War world as her News of the World and Simon the Fiddler. Jean-Louis Chenneville — once a successful farmer and gentleman — returns from the war a broken man having spent a year in the hospital in a semi-coma. He awakens to a dark world of ruin — Lincoln had been assassinated, Lee had surrendered, and the Gray Union army had gone home. His body and mind are slowly healing — his memory has wide gaps.

When he does finally get home, he gets worse news — news that sends him off on a long, single-minded journey to right a terrible wrong. Giles excels at bringing a place and time to life — in this case I almost wish she was a little less skilled. It is a depressing time — full of chaos, corruption, and despair. The war is over but things have not returned to any kind of normal — there is little stability in the South, with deep-seated hatreds and little consistent law enforcement.

The story is slow paced with characters — some unpleasant but many good people just trying to make things work again — introduced as part of his heroic journey. Each character had a unique backstory that highlighted all the different people who found themselves in this difficult time and place from a wide variety of starting points. My favorite part had to do with the telegraph operators that he met and the sub community they formed (with details completely and accurately belonging to the time period). There were definitely times that I wished we could have a little less atmosphere and more plot. The book was thick with description and I don’t visualize from textual description very well, which made some of the (albeit exquisitely depicted) passages tedious for me. I was happy with the ending, but until then it was a bit of a depressing read — depressing because of how hard that time really was, not because someone put a bunch of dramatic events to force readers into heavy emotions. I’m very glad I read it, but I wasn’t super cheerful during that week …

Some quotes:
“The clippers ran like teeth over the long scar. John shut his hands together with tense precision as if pain were a mathematical problem, as if he had just solved it and the solution did not include making a noise if he could help it. Sweat ran down his face.”

“The Ohio steamboat was better because the only movement was the unhinged, sliding feel of a vessel with a shallow keel as it moved across the water.”

“He tried to get a grip on himself. This was no way to live, in this messy chaos of despair.”

“People were draining south like wintertime migratory birds.”

“Every word seemed some strange phrase of dejection and unhappiness.”

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paulette Jiles’s News of the World and Enemy Women, so I was eagerly waiting for her newest book, Chenneville! Like News of the World, Chenneville is set during the Post-Civil War era, but the main character has a unique and intriguing story of his own.

When former Union soldier Jean-Luis (John) Chenneville returns home from the war, he discovers that his dear sister and her family have been brutally murdered. The killer is still on the loose, the law isn’t going to do anything about it, so he decides he must bring the murderer to justice no matter what the cost. John sets out to find him, though he is still not fully recovered from a head injury he sustained in the war. What follows is the story of his long, arduous, and sometimes dangerous pursuit of a man named Dodd in lawless, Post-Civil War country, from outside St. Louis, MO, all the way to San Antonio, TX.

Chenneville was a riveting read for me. Jean-Luis (John) is a strong and determined character who is willing to lose everything. As his saga unfolded, I wanted to keep on reading because I wondered whether he would be able to prevail due to his health and the many people he encountered along the way (both good and bad) who had the potential to deter him from his quest. Also, Jiles’ beautiful descriptions of the landscape of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and her use of the vernacular of the time (with French words and phrases sprinkled throughout) brought the story to life.

Some reviewers say Chenneville moves too slowly, especially at the beginning. However, I think the pace lends authenticity to the amount of time John needs to recover from his head injury. I think it also helps the reader feel the slower pace of life in general during that era.

I recommend this book for historical fiction fans and for those who just want to read a good story.

Thanks to William Morrow/Harper Collins and Net Galley for the digital ARC in exchange for a review.

Read 9.19 - 9.23.2023
DNF @60%

I am so very disappointed in this book; I have read The News of the World and that was a magnificent book. Unfortunately, this is not [for me].

I read to 60% and realized I just could not read one more word and made the tough decision to DNF. The biggest problem for me was, after learning of his war wound and his healing and coming home [and the the murder that happens off-screen] NOTHING HAPPENS. It is just a man and his horse and lots and lots of rumination [that is less than exciting]. The biggest action in 60% of the book is meeting the man in the telegraph shack [that part of the book was actually good] and then stopping in the next town and having a "lovely" chat with a local sheriff [that doesn't go the way anyone plans]. That is it. And after I read this: "Then he said, "I've been after this man for a long time, and I intend to get him. I've come a long way and I will probably go on further yet. I don't care how long it takes, how far he goes, or where, I intend to find him." ", I realized that I just didn't care anymore. Not for the characters, not for the resolution, not for the LONG TRIP this man is going to continue to make, and here we are.

I am disappointed as I was really looking forward to this one.

Thank you to NetGalley, Paulette Jiles, and William Morrow for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars for me.

Jiles's newest stark, beautiful, heartbreaking historical fiction tracks former Union soldier John Chenneville as he travels the country seeking vengeance for the brutal murder of his sister and family.<?b>

The people in this county had not been like this before, if he could recall it correctly--this chaos, this land of criminals and casual murder.

I got full-body chills when I saw that Paulette Jiles had a new historical fiction novel coming out. The enthusiasm of my obsession with her book News of the World was (borderline? full-on?) irritating to the rest of my book club years ago, but I couldn't help my love.

In Jiles's Chenneville, titular character John Chenneville is a former Union soldier who has spent the year since the end of the war recovering from a severe brain injury. Now he's on a quest for revenge for the brutal, senseless murder of his sister and her family.

How long do you keep it up, how far do you go to find a man like this?

The mayhem of lawlessness and martial law means that crimes are going unchecked all over. Chenneville single-mindedly travels through the Reconstruction-era United States on a relentless search for A.J. Dodd, who has slaughtered various innocents and, Chenneville believes, requires Chenneville to exact justice upon him.

It occurred to him that this was what normal people did. That this was ordinary and common and that these ordinary, common things were attained at great cost; they were actually fragile and could be destroyed even in a matter of days by artillery, by riots, by hatred.

Along the way, he encounters a colorful cast of characters who either renew his faith in humanity or make him deeply question it. Chenneville's vengeance spurs him on, and he pushes forward despite encountering setbacks, grave injuries, a US Marshal's determined search for John himself, the distraction of a clever, brave woman, and the pain of losing those dear to him.

Jiles writes gorgeously about the unforgiving landscape, post-Civil-War wasteland, and the sprigs of promising new beginnings. As always, her main characters are richly layered, struggle with terrible circumstances, retain strong moral compasses, and find glimmers of hope in the darkest of days.

They regarded each other silently. Something had happened, something he had not wanted to happen. Death and illness had brought them together as if these things were orbits and they heavenly bodies flung into certain trajectories to accompany each other through trials, troubles, and perhaps even times of happiness.

Minor note: I love that toward the end of the story, the text briefly references Captain Kidd from Jiles's News of the World ("...a man had come who read aloud from newspapers gathered from the entire world over, including stories of polar explorers and sinking ships in the Atlantic Ocean...").

This was heartbreaking and lovely historical fiction from Paulette Jiles. I loved it.

I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and William Morrow & Company.

Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?

Paulette Jiles also wrote News of the World, Simon the Fiddler, and The Color of Lightning.

You might also like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Satisfying Novels about Revenge and Six More Satisfying Novels about Revenge.

At long last, Jiles returns to the world of the post Civil War West in this follow on to Simon the Fiddler and News of the World. She writes beautifully poetic descriptions of the Mississippi and Missouri flood lands and their inhabitants, describing the sights, sounds and smells of a life on foot and horseback.

Chenneville returns home from the war, wounded and still healing, to the news that his sister and her family have been murdered. He sets out to revenge her death with little more to go on than a single name and description. In the enforced intimacy of shared hard times, he comes to know some singular characters who subtly change the course of his quest until, when it comes to an end, he finds himself a very different man.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Paulette Jiles writes like nobody else. She manages to mine fresh material out of a genre that seemed overused without a new road to discover. Comparisons will be made to News of the World, her magnum opus, in that it is set just post-Civil War and presents a road trip, almost a picaresque journey through the midwest, but does so with such originality and with a studied purpose. John Chenneville, damaged and bent on revenge, as a character is one who a reader will relish spending time with.

Paulette Jiles, you have once again written an amazing story! Chenneville just may be my favorite thus far. Set immediately following the Civil War, Jiles shows us a country in turmoil. Martial law is in force, but does little to keep the people safe.

John Chenneville, a Union soldier, has been recovering from a massive head injury for the past several months and has finally become well enough to return home to Missouri. He knows that the Doctors have been shielding him from bad news and is anxious to get home to see to his family and property.

Once home, John learns that his younger sister, her husband and small child were murdered several months before he returned home. Grieving and angry, John vows to get stronger in order to hunt down the man who killed them.

As John begins his hunt for the killer, he is led deeper into the south, ending up in Texas. I found his journey and the people her met along the way fascinating. Jiles was so clever to throw the easter eggs from another of her books into the storyline. When I finished reading, I had to go hunt for Simon the Fiddler on my shelves so I could do a re-read.

Historical fiction readers and those who love a western thriller will greatly enjoy this book.

Many thanks to NetGally and William Morrow for allowing to read an advance copy. I am pleased to offer my honest review and recommend this book to other readers.

This war story of revenge was SO good. I can't believe this is my first Jiles. She is a master of her craft. While the story might be simple, the characters are the writing are not. While I of course recommend this to historical fiction readers, I believe literary fiction readers (like myself) will also find a whole lot to love here.

A Review of “Chenneville” by Paulette Jiles
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro
(review submitted to The Southern Literary Review for publication in November or December)

Paulette Jiles’ newest one, Chenneville: A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance (William Morrow 2023) is a fine, intelligent adaptation of a classic hero’s-journey archetype. It is both an action-oriented adventure story and a splendidly well written literary novel about a most painful period in our history. As Jiles has successfully done before in prior novels, she creates a memorable protagonist at the close of the Civil War and its aftermath, drawing extraordinary determination from someone who might well have stayed rather ordinary but for the circumstances of war, damage, loss, and the post-war lawlessness in the South. Her protagonist becomes anything but conventional as he hardens on the path he chooses, doggedly persistent and willing to give up any hint of a decent future to achieve the one thing that he wants—revenge.

Thus, at the center of the story is a scarred man, John Chenneville, a veteran of the war who rather miraculously survives a serious head wound in the Petersburg siege, wakes from a long coma, and with great resolve rebuilds his physical and mental strength. Early on, Jiles shows us his mettle with such observations as “In three years of fighting, it had been burned forever into his mind that if you were not strong and unceasingly alert you would not live. He could not shake this. Nor would he ever.”

What drives him, though, is his desire to avenge the death of his sister, her baby, and her husband at the close of the war by shooting down the man who killed them. He is told who the murderer is, so he does not need to be a detective, and as it turns out, the villain, the allusive Dodd, is a serial killer. Yet, knowing he is being hunted, Dodd is a man on the run, heading west at such a brutal speed as to leave horses he rode to death in his path. Chenneville does not want to see Dodd arrested and tried, rather he wants to shoot Dodd dead himself. His desire for revenge is personal. He does not care if he goes to prison for murder himself, and he figures that will be his fate, but nonetheless Chenneville is unwavering in his belief that killing Dodd is what he must do. His tenacious pursuit after leaving his family home in Missouri is summed up in one passage as: “He had come nearly four hundred miles and had been on the road a month since Fort Smith, much of it on foot, and he had slept under a roof only five times.”

Chenneville is crossing Texas in the winter across terrain unfamiliar to him, and encountering hostile soldiers, indigenous peoples, outlaws, and the misery of refugees. That he finds those who help him, those he is to help, and those who further endanger him is typical of a hero’s-journey format, but Jiles graces these lesser characters with such vivid descriptions they become as memorable as the major characters. Chenneville also finds—at least potentially—a woman to love and be loved by. That she becomes his ally is a given, and, as with Jiles’ other female characters in prior novels, she is formable, hardworking, and outside the prevailing norms. A light-fingered male nurse is another intriguing character who flits into and out of the story with great page-turning plotting and whose talent for thievery proves fortuitous.

Dogged by a relentless marshal with a warrant for arrest for both Chenneville and Dodds, Cheenville is ultimately joined by a solid, stoic horse and a sensible, loyal red bone hound on his quest. These animals become worthy companions in his long, hard journey and Chenneville becomes dependent upon them, as they are upon him.

Jiles manages to write in a style both sparse and yet remarkably beautiful, lush, and rich. Her descriptive passages excel as in this example: “The river was noisy far below, and the forest spoke aloud as one naked branch creaked against another and small dried leaves trembled on the greenbrier vines. The new moon swam up out of the horizon and into the heavens.” With one basic line, she can capture a scene and a mood. “The night came at John like blindness, like a dark sea. He prayed for the rising of the moon.”

Her plotting is reminiscent of her some of her prior books—a person at the end of the Civil War undertaking a lonely and dangerous journey across a lawless, disrupted landscape nearly destroyed by the war. That is, Texas where martial law—or no law at all—prevails. This anarchy of course adds to the danger and suspense in the book. This is a time, place and faltering culture where, as Jiles writes, “there was some doubt among the people as to which laws applied, if any, and to whom.” Over and over, she portrays the tensions this creates among the survivors and refugees. “It was a country devastated by war and still under military rule, so life and woodcutting and everything happened on tiptoe in a tense and listening silence.”

Occasionally, the plot seems perhaps a tad contrived, and she does indulge in some familiar Civil War tropes, though with her own imprint upon them. As such, this might not be Jiles’ best novel—but how, seriously, does one top Enemy Women and News of the World (a finalist for the National Book Award)? Yet it is a compelling, historically accurate, and immensely powerful, engaging novel. Fans of Lonesome Dove, Cold Mountain, and Jiles’ prior books will particularly find plenty to relish, and anyone who appreciates a great reading experience will find much to praise.

Jiles, born and educated in Missouri, now lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was made into a Tom Hanks movie.

The Civil War has ended as LT John Chenneville awakens in a field hospital with a serious head injury. He's been in a semi-coma for months and is as weak as a kitten. When he is well enough to travel, he is sent home to St Louis, where his family had been some of the earliest French settlers. There he learns some grievous news: his sister and her family have been murdered.

It becomes John's mission to find the killer and get retribution. But first he must continue to heal and regain his strength. At last, he's ready and sets off on an odyssey that will take him across nearly four hundred miles of the American West, much of it on foot. These are unlawful times and he can't count on lawmen for justice.

Along the way, he travels through a wild and beautiful territory that author Jiles describes so well. But as with all such odysseys, it's the people he meets and the experiences he has that is the most interesting. And through his thoughts and actions, Jiles reveals what kind of man John Chenneville truly is.

I received an arc of this new novel from the author and publisher via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

I enjoyed Jiles's News of the World, particularly the well-drawn characters, and I feel the same way about Chenneville. Jean Chenneville grew up in a French speaking area near St. louis, then fought in the Civil War, where he received a head wound that landed him in a field hospital in a coma. When he recovered, he hired his male nurse, a kleptomaniac, to accompany him back home. Upon arriving, he was informed that his sister, her husband, and their one year old child had been murdered by a deputy sheriff. Jean gave himself time to recover a steady hand with a gun, and set out for revenge.
Chenneville is the story of a scrupulous man on a single minded mission—to bring a psychopath to justice—and the people he meets along the way.

This was a slow moving but very descriptive book. I would have liked to read more and more, I enjoyed following John Chenneville on his quest for justice.

Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for access to this arc.

I saw that this book was coming out and I immediately requested it, no questions asked, Reading the blurb I figured it was going to be bloody, brutal at times, harsh, perhaps bittersweet with “morally complex” characters, and told at a slower pace. That didn’t stop me at all. It was everything that I thought it might be as well as having female characters who are smart and courageous. It is a book that will not uplift people and make them smile. There is little that is happy about it for a long time. But it sucked me in and I could not stop reading until I knew “what happened.”

This is another book set during the post-Civil war years of early Reconstruction. Travel is again important and this occurs at the slow pace of horseback. Even a man who mercilessly drives the horses to lameness and death that he buys or steals from others in order to stay ahead of John Chenneville can only go so fast. John has the aliases the killer uses (extracted from an brutal associate in a not so nice manner), the intuition of what environments the killer would seek (after talking to witnesses and near victims), a set of forged discharge papers ($20 but worth every penny) for when he doesn’t want others to know his real name, and the driving determination to kill his sister’s murderer.

Before condemning John, remember that his family sought justice from the law and got nowhere. At one point John encounters someone who knows the killer, might know what the killer has done but who refuses to tell John where the killer is.

Along the way, John meets and interacts with others trying to move forward with their lives. The country is wrecked but John has little empathy for those in Confederate states who built it from the enslaved labor of others. He just wants to keep moving and close in on his prey. The man he seeks is out there, maybe a few days before him or perhaps falling a day or so behind but John is close. Things get more personal when the murderer strikes again, killing another person John met. And though John meets a young woman who knows his quest and with whom John feels he could happily live his life, his goal remains paramount. So anyone looking for a romantic HEA, just put that aside. This is historical fiction.

As the pages left to read dwindled, I got more anxious. Would John find the man he seeks and would John deal out the justice that burns in him to deliver? Another character says “There’s the law and then there’s justice. Sometimes the two overlap.” I didn’t see this wrap up coming, no not at all. And yet it fits and for Reasons I’ll take it. It also makes me wonder who among the many characters in this book (with nods here to Jefferson Kidd and Simon Boudlin) will be seen again in your next one. B

CHENNEVILLE transports readers to the end of the Civil War and deposits them smack in the middle of the unresolved legal, commercial and familial entanglements still active in the country. Specifically, very active in the mind and body of a recuperating Union soldier, finally released back into his former life, only to learn most of his family has died rather violently. His inability to process this news and find some measure of peace defines the state of the Union. This tale describes his attempts to resolve his predicament less than amicably. Author Paulette Jiles has a nack for making history come alive. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishing for providing me with this book to review.

Paulette Jiles' "Chenneville" is a literary gem that seamlessly weaves together history, culture, and human connection. Set against the backdrop of post-Civil War Texas, this novel takes readers on a mesmerizing journey into the lives of its richly drawn characters, delivering a poignant exploration of love, loss, and the enduring human spirit.

At the heart of "Chenneville" is the eponymous town, a place steeped in both hardship and resilience. Jiles skillfully paints a vivid portrait of a community grappling with the aftermath of war, facing the challenges of reconstruction, and adapting to a rapidly changing world. The author's meticulous research is evident in the way she brings the historical setting to life, from the dusty streets to the simmering tensions.

The story unfolds primarily through the perspective of Alma, a young woman navigating the complexities of her time. Alma's character is a triumph of Jiles' storytelling prowess. She is a fiercely independent and intelligent woman, determined to carve her own path in a society that often seeks to confine her. Her inner struggles and the obstacles she faces add depth to the narrative, making her a relatable and compelling protagonist.

Jiles' prose is nothing short of enchanting. Her lyrical writing captures the essence of the Texas landscape, evoking a sense of place that immerses readers in the harsh beauty of the frontier. The dialogue is peppered with authenticity, capturing the distinct voices of the era and region. This attention to detail breathes life into the story, making the characters and their world feel tangible.

While "Chenneville" is primarily a character-driven narrative, the plot takes unexpected and intriguing turns. The novel explores themes of love and longing, family and friendship, and the enduring bonds that hold people together. Jiles expertly crafts the relationships between characters, making each connection a source of both joy and sorrow. As Alma's life becomes increasingly intertwined with the inhabitants of Chenneville, the novel's emotional resonance deepens.

If there's a minor drawback to "Chenneville," it may be the novel's slow pacing, which some readers may find challenging. However, those who appreciate rich character development and a deep exploration of historical settings will likely savor every page.

In conclusion, "Chenneville" by Paulette Jiles is a captivating and elegantly written novel that transports readers to a bygone era. With its memorable characters, evocative prose, and a narrative that explores the complexities of the human experience, this book is a poignant reminder of the enduring power of storytelling. It's a must-read for anyone who enjoys historical fiction that goes beyond the surface, delving into the hearts and minds of its characters while shedding light on a lesser-known period in American history.

This is a slow moving, historical fiction story set in the post Civil War era. It is a journey of one man and his search for revenge.

In Virginia in 1865, Jean-Louis (John) Chenneville wakes up in a battlefield hospital where he has been in a coma for several months. Recovering with a limited memory due to a head injury, he learns that the Civil War has ended. He soon returns home to Missouri only to find that tragedy has struck his family while he was gone.

John spends his first year back from the war rebuilding his homestead and regaining his memories while healing his body and mind. Then, in 1866 he begins his quest to find a man by the name of Dodd, to avenge the murder of his sister and her family. He travels from Missouri to Texas, on horse and on foot, along rivers, over hills and mountains, and across the plains; all with a singular determination to chase down one man and kill him.

With the variety of possibilities available to us as we travel today, we take for granted how quickly and easily we can get from one place to another, but John Chenneville's trek is not a simple one as he encounters many obstacles and dangers along the way.

This is the type of story that grows on you as it unfolds. The main character becomes more likable as the story progresses and the reader is taken on a journey with this man over hundreds of miles and many months. Unfortunately, a lack luster ending takes my rating down to 3.5 stars.

Overall, I liked this book more than this author's last book "Simon the Fiddler", but not nearly as much as I adored her book "News of the World".

My sincere thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for giving me the opportunity to read a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own..