The Confederate General Rides North: A Novel

In this richly imagined, utterly original debut a mother- daughter road trip leads a young girl—a precocious Civil War buff—to a hard-won understanding of the American history she loves and the personal history she inherits. 

Eleven-year-old  Katherine  McConnell  is  so  immersed in Civil War history that she often imagines herself a general, leading troops to battle. When Kat’s beautiful, impulsive mother wakes her early one morning in the summer of 1968 to tell her they will be taking a road trip from Georgia  to  Maine  to  find  antiques  for  a  shop  she  wants  to open,  Kat  sees  the  opportunity  for  adventure  and  a  respite from her parents’ troubled marriage. Armed with a road atlas and her most treasured history books, Kat cleverly charts a course that will take them to battlefields and historic sites and, for her mother’s sake she hopes, bring them home a success. But as the trip progresses, Kat’s experiences test her faith in her mother and her loyalty to the South, bringing her to a dif- ficult new awareness of her family and the history she reveres. And when their journey comes to an abrupt and devastating halt  in  Gettysburg,  Kat  must  make  an  irrevocable  choice about their ultimate destination.

Deftly narrated with the beguiling honesty of a child’s per- spective and set against the rich backdrop of the South during the 1960s, The Confederate General Rides North gracefully blends a complex mother-daughter relationship, the legacy of the Civil War, and the ache of growing up too soon.

Amanda  C.  Gable’s  short  stories  have  appeared  in The North American Review, The Crescent Review, North Dakota Review, Kalliope, Other Voices, and others. She has been awarded residency fellowships by Yaddo, the Hambidge Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A native of Marietta, Georgia, she currently lives in Decatur, Georgia.