... moving.

... is not, strictly speaking, a military history, though the reader learns about battle tactics and strategies. This is human history, in which Matteson skillfully weaves the biographies of 'five heroes'.

Matteson immerses readers.

Matteson's (Eden's Outcasts) sweeping collective biography is not a conventional study of the bloody Civil War battle at Fredericksburg, VA. While skillfully conveying the historical importance of the events of December 1862, he focuses on the significance of the battle in the lives of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Pelham, Walt Whitman, Arthur B. Fuller, and Louisa May Alcott.

The chaos of war transformed into a riveting tale of sacrifice and redemption.