A
troubled Adam Springer, Heinrich Mueller’s grandson, returns from the
Civil War to the family farm in Ohio. Bedeviled by the memory of
battlefields red with the mingled blood of north and south, nightmares
and melancholy plague him.
One image Adam holds dear—the lovely young woman he watched descend the
stairs of a grand Atlanta home before it gave into flames spread by the
Yankee hoard. Rejecting the come hither glances of local farm girls,
Adam seeks a woman of similar beauty and grace and finds her in
eighteen-year old Martha.
She leaves her elegant Marietta home to join Adam in the shabby house
on the lonely farm where his mother, Lizzie, reigns as queen. The
marriage is stormy, children arrive, children die, and Martha—her
girlish essence transformed to steel—takes their sons and leaves to run
a hotel.
Was it possible for Adam to change? Could he win her back? Did he even
want to? The fledgling Ohio pottery industry provides a subplot to this
story of two lovers as they work through domestic mistreatment and
family tragedy.
An
American Trilogy:
Journey
to a Land Called Hope The
Wilderness Road Broken
Country—Broken Soldier