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Title: Nostalgia

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Dennis McFarland

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-01-13

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

From best-selling author Dennis McFarland comes an extraordinary Civil War novel: the journey of a nineteen-year-old private abandoned by his comrades in the Wilderness, struggling to regain his voice, his identity, and his place in a world - all utterly changed by what he has experienced on the battlefield.

In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes, a pitcher for the famous Eckford Club, enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister, a schoolteacher, devastated and alone in their Brooklyn home. The siblings, who have recently lost both their parents, are unusually attached and Summerfield fears his untoward, secret feelings for his sister. This rich backstory is intercut with stunning scenes of Hayes' soul-altering hours on the march, at the front - the slaughter of barely grown young men who, only days before, whooped it up with him in a regimental ball game; his temporary deafness and disorientation after a shell blast; his fevered attempt to find safe haven after he has been deserted by his own comrades. And later, in the Washington military hospital where he eventually finds himself, now mute and unable even to write his name. In this twilit realm, among the people he encounters - a compassionate drug-addicted amputee, the ward matron who only appears to be his enemy, the captain who is convinced that Hayes is faking his illness - is a gray-bearded eccentric who visits the ward daily and becomes his strongest advocate: Walt Whitman. This timeless story, whose outcome hinges on the fellowship that is forged in crisis, reminds us how deep the wounds of war are, not all of which are visible.

Members Reviews:

Nostalgia

Abandoned, battered, and lost in the wake of the Wilderness Campaign, Summerfield Hayes,a 19-year old Union soldier,finds his way to a Washington military hospital. There, amid memories of his young life in Brooklyn and his recent ordeal in the Virginia woods, and surrounded by the horrors of the ward, Hayes encounters a wound-dresser known as Walt. Walt Whitman, as McFarland imagines him, is an enigmatic but completely convincing figure whose empathy and compassion offer some hope of recovery to the broken men he serves.

McFarland's sentences are beautiful: if you tend to read too fast, as I do, you stop and reread them in order not to miss anything. The inner and outer world of the young soldier come alive on the page, allowing the reader to experience civilian life in 19th-century Brooklyn (including its baseball fields) as well as the stink of a military hospital during an agonizing Washington spring. This is a wonderful book -- highly recommended.

Just read 80% of it.

Starts out very interesting. Good characters and baseball side story. Drags when the main character gets to the hospital and just dies after he gets out and home. Very disappointing ending. And the characters sick lusting after his sister is , well, sick and very poorly done.

Requires your full attention..

This is a good book, but it is a committment..This is not the kind of book you can read with on eye on the TV. The writer's style is very dense and takes concentration to full comprehend the story. Overall a good read, but not something you will burn through in a couple days.

excellent book. The author has done his research and ...

excellent book . The author has done his research and everything about life in 1864 seems authentic, though the baseball did

surprise me.