“An intimate, sweeping portrait of a country and couple divided, David O. Stewart’s The Burning Land does what all good historical fiction should do: gives us characters to root for and brings the past so vividly to life it feels like the present. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the trilogy unfolds.”

– Louis Bayard, author of Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Pale Blue Eye

“The Burning Land is an elegantly written, heartrending evocation of a Maine family's suffering during the Civil War and its aftermath. The battle scenes are riveting, the characters convincingly and compellingly developed. As a Civil War historian, I highly recommend David O. Stewart's marvelous novel.”

– Peter Cozzens, author of The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

“David O. Stewart has written many books, but this may be his best: a gripping Civil War novel, set in coastal Maine and with the famous Twentieth Maine Regiment, followed by an exciting account of post-war Chicago. This is a book you won't want to miss.”

– Walter Stahr, author of bestselling biographies of William Seward, Edwin Stanton, and Salmon P. Chase

“In The Burning Land, David O. Stewart has vividly brought alive the landscapes and human spirit of Civil War era America from the hardscrabble coast of Maine, through the battlefields of Virginia and Pennsylvania, to the chaotic postwar scramble to survive in the burgeoning city of Chicago. To the generational drama of the tenacious Overstreet family, Mr. Stewart brings a historian's feel for the ways in which ordinary lives were shaped by extraordinary times, enriched by an unerring eye for authentic detail and page-turning prose.”

– Fergus Bordewich, author of Congress At War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied LIncoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America

“From a ground-level view, David O. Stewart chronicles the joys, heartbreaks, triumphs, struggles, perseverance, and downright grittiness of the American people through the tragedy of the American Civil War and the nation’s rebuilding. The characters shine through as though they were real and like my favorite characters, quickly felt like friends and acquaintances. Mr. Stewart’s writing transported me to the quaint villages of Maine, the battlefields of Virginia, and growing cities of a nation trying to rediscover itself after the transformational events of the Civil War. I would highly recommend The Burning Land to anyone interested in the American story and the people who created it.”

– Allen R. Thompson, author of In the Shadow of the Round Tops: Longstreet’s Countermarch, Johnston’s Reconnaissance, and the Enduring Battles for the Memory of July 2, 1863