Ira Cahill Stevens, a Union soldier captured in battle, takes you on a shocking, unnerving tour of life in Andersonville, the infamous Confederate prison. We follow Ira and his comrades from their ride in a packed train car to the hopes, dreams, delirium, and degradation of life in a stinking, disease-ridden enclosure where hundreds of men die daily and are stacked by the gate. The greatest possible hope is to be traded back to the Union in exchange for Confederate prisoners, but the likelihood is slim. A more probable fate for the men is death from starvation, disease, or even from their own countrymen: raiders who sweep through the camps at night stealing what little the others still own. In a place like Andersonville, even acts of mercy are nightmarish:

One surgeon tells the prisoner to lie on the floor. Another puts chloroform against his nose. The third surgeon, an old fellow, kneels alongside the man and in one quick move, severs flesh and arteries, then commences sawing the bone above the elbow.... They pour whiskey into him and then it's my turn.

Throughout the terror, Ira and his comrades try to maintain a sense of family, sharing their limited provisions, reading to one another from two now-priceless books that they managed to retain, and nursing one another through compounded illnesses for which the only medicine is persimmons-berry tea or bartered quinine. Joanna Higgins's excellent research makes this tale both a stunning fiction and a realistic historical account of the country's darkest war and the hell that was Andersonville.