BURKE, JAMES LEE — White Doves at Morning

Orion Books Ltd. 2003. Hardcover with dust jacket, 24 Cm. Book, 280 well bound pp & 700g to post. Burke has written this historical novel -- an epic story of love, hate, and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and Reconstruction. At the center of the novel are James Lee Burke's own ancestors, Robert Perry, who comes from a slave-owning family of wealth and privilege, and Willie Burke, born of Irish immigrants, a poor boy who is as irreverent as he is brave and decent. Despite their personal and political conflicts with the issues of the time, both men join the Confederate Army, choosing to face ordeal by fire, yet determined not to back down in their commitment to their moral beliefs, to their friends, and to the abolitionist woman with whom both have become infatuated. As in all of Burke's writings, White Doves at Morning is full of wonderful, colourful, unforgettable villains. With battle scenes at Shiloh and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that no reader will ever forget, and set in a time of upheaval that affected all men and all women at all levels of society, White Doves at Morning is an epic worthy of America's most tragic conflict. Excellent/Excellent.