Hunter Jones Joins The Civil War (Missouri)

What? Another Civil War Book? - Yes. But this one is different enough to capture a whole new generation and turn them into keepers of the flame. - The working title of this new book was: Huckleberry Finn gets sucked up into the Civil War. Like Huck, Hunter Jones is a precocious, wily pre-teen who gets in and out of trouble as easily as Mark Twin's Huckleberry Finn did. - The story opens as Hunter Jones watches his dad get killed by a silky riverboat gambler, as they get ready to switch boats at Des Arc, trying to escape up the White River to Batesville, then onto St. Louis and the safety of the north, just as the Civil War is about to erupt. - As an indigent with no means of support, he is tossed off the boat, chased by an alcoholic town sheriff and forced to hide in the woods, surviving the best he can, until he gets shot and captured by soldiers from the newly formed Confederate Army. - General Thompson tells him, 'If you are going to eat my beans, you are going to fight my war.' With that Hunter becomes a non-combatant in the Confederate Army - a drummer and step-and-fetch-it for the general. It's in that role where he gets kicked in the head by a mule and goes into a coma. Two old crusty veterans of the Crimean and Mexican Wars befriend him. Believing that Hunter can hear even though he doesn't respond, they read to him daily from old copies of battlefield newspapers. - With his fertile imagination Hunter dreams he is living the events that are being read to him. Even though he and his story are fictional, the sad details, facts, figures and events of the Civil War are historically correct. Through his eyes the reader will visit and experience many first that changed or altered the direction of the Civil War, West of the Mississippi: the first battle of the war, the first General to die, the first use of instant messaging (telegraph) in a war, the first use of metal hulled ships (ironsides), the first battle Ulysses S. Grant fought (and lost?), plus other first.