Howard Bahr compresses this moving Civil War novel into 48 hours--two short days filled with grim deaths and the prelude, at least, to a love story. First issued by a small Baltimore press in 1997,The Black Flower was nominated for four major awards, including one from the Academy of Arts and Letters, but failed to garner the attention paid to Cold Mountain. Civil War buffs will rejoice in Bahr's vivid retelling of the November 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. More to the point, The Black Flower transcends its historical fiction niche and deserves a wider audience. Confederate rifleman Bushrod Carter, the novel's protagonist, is wounded during the battle and taken to a nearby house. In this makeshift hospital, he and two childhood friends huddle together, "shivering with cold and exhaustion, ignoring the ghostly shapes still shuffling through the coiling smoke around them, calling the names of men who would never answer." Bahr has poured 20 years of research into his novel, but this haunting portrayal of suffering and death is the product not merely of historical diligence but also an impressive literary imagination. --Eugenia Trinkle

Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe
"Powerful and elegiac... Readers will be reminded of Stephen Crane, of Faulkner's Civil War stories, and of John Brown's Body."

From AudioFile
It is the afternoon before another battle in 1864; the soldiers are war-weary Confederate troops facing possible defeat. Bushrod Carter contemplates his future and ruminates about past battles and adventures. Bahr has created a highly visual novel, describing all the minutiae of war and the ravaged countryside. Emerson's monotonous tone drones on and on, never getting caught up in the action, fear and horror of the Civil War. Rather, Emerson echoes the weariness of the troops as they struggle to survive yet another day and continue to fight for their cause. With the stream of consciousness shifting of scenes, the listener will have to keep very alert to follow both the story and the messages of this novel. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The senseless agony of armed conflict is expertly evoked in this elegiac Civil War novel. As Bushrod Carter, a seasoned Confederate rifleman, grimly anticipates his next battle, he experiences both the mind-numbing terror and the detached resignation characteristic of most common foot soldiers. Shortly after the infamous Battle of Franklin commences, Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee is quickly overwhelmed by the firepower of the superior Union forces. Before succumbing to his own wounds, Carter bears witness to the grim aftermath of combat as he roams through the carnage haunted by the visages of his departed comrades and horrified by the gruesome reality of the slaughter. The mournful tone of the narrative serves to underscore the powerful drama of this harrowing tale. Margaret Flanagan

From Kirkus Reviews
Bahr makes an impressive debut with a haunting tale of a brief but bloody encounter on the road to Nashville, which helped put paid to the Confederate cause in the latter stages of America's Civil War. Although a university graduate, Bushrod Carter is a private soldier in the 21st Mississippi, a storied regiment in the battered Southern army commanded by General John Bell Hood. Scattered by Sherman's march to the sea, Bushrod and his fellow veterans (wearied by three years of unremitting combat) find themselves facing fresh Union forces outside Franklin, Tenn., in late November of 1864. Ordered to attack, they advance across an open field to meet their entrenched foe on a fine autumn afternoon. After a fierce battle (seen only through the eyes of women and children in the farmstead Rebel officers have requisitioned as a hospital), the real horrors begin. Bandsmen bearing wounded from the battlefield by the light of guttering torches find Bushrod (who's sustained a concussion and lost a finger) almost by chance beneath a pile of corpses, but his two best friends did not survive the engagement. Meantime, under cover of darkness, scavengers roam the killing ground stripping the dead of their valuables, and a former teacher crazed by the carnage prays that God will forgive the South. Apparently little the worse for wear, Bushrod eventually manages to locate and bury his dead mates. Assisting him in this sad business is Anna Hereford, a relative visiting the family that owns the farm. While nearly dehumanized by what he's been through, the young--and doomed--rifleman feels attracted to Anna, who warily returns his interest. He soon follows his fallen comrades, however, leaving Anna to grieve for what might have been. A bleakly effective and economical account of men and women caught up in a bestial conflict. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ernest B. Ferguson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorville 1863
This is powerful medicine, concentrated emotion. I finished it in one long draught, thinking as I read of Crane, Hemingway, Mailer, and Faulkner...but realizing at the end that it was altogether original.

FROM THE PUBLISHER