Neverhome
Historians estimate that some four hundred women fought for their country during America’s Civil War. Many of them accompanied sweethearts or husbands, but as the woman who leaves her sickly husband at home and renames herself Ash Thompson tells us, “I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic.”
What could possibly motivate Ash to leave her beloved husband and Indiana farm – where she was known as Constance – and go to war? Ash felt it was important for one of them to go, but she also felt a yearning to travel and see the country as her dead mother had done, and to plant her boots with a thousand comrades atop the ruins of secession and slavery. She promises her mother’s shade, “I won’t run.”
Without a man to keep watch as she attends to nature’s needs, it is difficult for Ash to preserve her secret. The true identity of most female soldiers was revealed when they were wounded, captured, or killed. It is no different for Ash. Even worse, accusations of lunacy and betraying her country lie ahead.
Laird Hunt’s Neverhome is an American Iliad and Odyssey rolled into a single, poignant tale. Half is a powerful war story, and the other half follows Ash’s struggle to return home. What will she find there, and what will readers learn about Ash along the way? Hunt presents readers with vivid imagery, a compulsively readable story, and a courageous and complex heroine. I loved Neverhome, and highly recommend it.
