Available May 13 Deserters: A Novel

A clerical error has placed Robert Riley’s name on a list of men who have committed a particularly abhorrent form of desertion from the Union Army: bounty jumping. President Lincoln has said that such men—those who have cheated the system by accepting signing bonuses, or “bounties,” for multiple enlistments—should be hanged.

It is fall 1864, and Riley, who has in fact deserted, though just the ordinary way, and is in flight toward the territories, having collected his two sons from their homestead in Southern Ohio, as well as an orphaned girl he met on his way across the Appalachians. As the four move across the lower Midwest, they are pursued by a surly private detective on a monstrous horse who seeks the reward for bringing Riley in. With the detective man eventually on their heels, they are forced to divert by train into Chicago, where Riley knows a place to hide. And it is here, in this cold and dangerous metropolis, in the weeks leading up to the 1864 election, that things begin to unravel for the party.

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