This Scorched Earth: A Novel of the Civil War and the American West - Hardcover

The War America still fights: I watched the blossoms falling at the peach orchard on an April morning a century an a half after the battle at Shiloh. That was thirty years ago. I've been working on THIS SCORCHED EARTH ever since. Clearly the war has not gone away. As a nation we're still fighting it, trying to determine if the Confederate battle flag is a racist symbol, if Black Lives Matter, and whether statues of Southern generals should be taken down. Worse, we're doing it in a nation teetering on another sectional conflict, with a divided government whose party hatred is unmatched since 1860. Truth is indeed the first casualty of war, but so is remembrance of the cost and pain. I didn't want to write the myth. I'm first an anthropologist and  historian, and then a novelist. My passion was to tell the story of what that war did to human beings by choosing a forgotten place: northwest Arkansas, where Americans committed atrocity upon other Americans. I chose, not generals, but ordinary people, a family of three brothers and one sister. Open the first page. Meet the Hancocks.If I am remembered for anything as an author, it will be this book. My publisher at Forge Books tells me they will submit THIS SCORCHED EARTH for the Pulitzer competition and the National Book Award.  While that is humbling, I await your judgement, and hope that you will pen a review here, on Amazon, with your thoughts. 

WILLIAM GEAR is an international and USA Today bestselling author who holds a master's degree in archaeology. This Scorched Earth is his magnum opus, a riveting family saga that combines his passion for the subject with his expertise in research and archaeology.