In a challenging new novel, Jennifer Armstrong reveals the heart of a young woman in the midst of the U.S. Civil War. Protagonist Mairhe Mehan is an Irish immigrant trying to piece together the fragments of her family's life in war-torn Washington, D.C. A quiet man with a mane of flowing white hair helps her understand the dreams that fuel battle and pain. (Later, she learns that this man is the poet Walt Whitman.) Truly, this is historical fiction in a most uncommon sense. Armstrong's writing is so vivid, so heartfelt, that the turmoil of the Civil War rises again in the pages of this slim, eloquent book.