New Civil War Novel One of First to Take In-depth Look at the Campaign - and Home Front - in Georgia

ATHENS, Ga. – Most Civil War novels have focused on the storied battlefields in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania—with occasional exceptions such as Shiloh, in Tennessee. Now, a new novel covers the ground of Sherman’s searing campaign through Georgia, a conflict that began just south of Chattanooga and reached the gates of Atlanta.

The novel, A Distant Flame, is by noted Georgia author Philip Lee Williams and has just been published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press in New York.

The book is already being hailed by Civil War writers and historians as a watershed in literature for the period. Writer Robert K. Krick said, “Philip Lee Williams has crafted a powerful work that surely will become a classic of Civil War fiction. His fascinating characters perform on a deftly constructed historical stage.”

Historian Dr. Thomas Dyer added, “A Distant Flame is the best story yet written about the Atlanta campaign and life on the home front in Civil War Georgia. It is also much more. It blends scrupulously researched history with powerful narrative to produce a compelling, multidimensional story of one man’s life as shaped by the Civil War over a span of fifty years. It is a story of war, love, and community in a small north Georgia town, brilliantly told, full of insights into the complex impact of the Civil War on everyday southerners.”

The novel, which took ten years of research and writing, is special to Williams.

“Since I’m a Georgia native, I’ve always been curious about why there are so few novels about the campaign that decided the outcome of the Western Theater of the war,” said Williams, an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of Georgia. “This book is an accurate recreation of those few months in the spring of 1864 when war and all its terrible consequences, came to Georgia.”

Williams, winner of the coveted Townsend Prize for best novel published biennially by a Georgian, is the author of 10 previous books and a chapbook. Also named Georgia Author of the Year, Williams has published with such presses as Random House, W. W. Norton & Co., Penguin, and Ballantine in New York. As well, his books have been published by noted regional presses such as Hill Street Press, Peachtree Publishers, and Longstreet Press.

His work has been translated into many foreign languages, optioned for film, and published in numerous journals around the country. In addition, he is a prize-winning documentary film-maker and won a Finalist’s Award at the New York Film Festival.

“The Civil War remains terribly important for anyone who truly wants to understand our country,” said Williams. “The great gains of the Civil Rights Movement flow directly out of social changes that came out of the war. Shelby Foote said, quite accurately I think, that the Civil War was the crossroads of our being.”

Williams drew on family lore and the history of his hometown of Madison, Ga., in creating his new novel. His great-great Grandfather Joseph Bearden made Enfield Rifles at the Cook & Brother Armory in Athens, Ga., during the war and was later wounded at the Battle of Griswoldville. Another great-great-grandfather, Solomon Smith, fought with the 38th Georgia through Virginia and Maryland, even at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The story is about a sensitive young boy named Charlie Merrill, who loses much while living in the small town of Branton, Georgia, during the war, then joins the Confederate troops as a sharpshooter in the campaign toward Atlanta. The story takes place on three time levels simultaneously, and one section shows Charlie in old age on the day he is to deliver a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta. A Distant Flame is also a love story, focusing on Charlie’s relationship with a young Boston girl stranded in Branton at the outset of the war.

The Atlanta Campaign took place beginning in May 1864 and ending with the fall of Atlanta months later. There were a number of battles during the troop movements, among the most notable at Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain.

Novelist Marly Youmans of Cooperstown, N. Y., was winner of the 2000 Michael Shaara Award for the best Civil War novel of the year, The Wolf Pit. (Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and widely considered one of the best Civil War novels ever written.) Regarding Williams’s new novel, she said:

“The dramatic wartime events of A Distant Flame are written in the heart of Charlie Merrill--sharpshooter, lover, pilgrim, and friend of General Patrick Cleburne. This intense and memorable story of battlefield and hearth, the author's twelfth book, tells us that it is high time to assess and treasure the work of Philip Lee Williams.”