"The Smoke at Dawn" by Jeff Shaara

When we recently decided to take a trip to Lookout Mountain and the Chattanooga area to visit the National Parks/Civil War Battlefields, I really wanted to get as much of an understanding as I could about the battles.  I started devouring all of the books I could!

I have read several of the Shaara books, but I was waiting to read my copy of "The Smoke at Dawn" before going to that part of Tennessee again.

So, I finally read the 500 page volume.  Its funny, because the Shaara books are huge, but they have such a great flow to them.  They read like a much shorter book because it is so easy to get into them.

Another thing about the Shaara books....This isn't a dry telling of the battle, that most of us have a hard time following.  Jeff Shaara (and his dad before him) really try to get into the heads of the characters.  I feel like they try hard to understand, and write about the logic inside of the minds of the legendary generals.

I think the author really paints a clear picture of how the main generals (Bragg, CSA, and Rosecrans, US) came to both fail at this battle.  George Thomas, Rosecrans replacement, really sticks out as a fascinating, and often overlooked (by history) character

I feel like I KNOW some of these guys better myself now too.  I would absolutely expect Braxton Bragg to not get a basic joke told by a common Johnny Reb.  I would also expect Jefferson Davis to defend Bragg to his mutinous army.

Sure, this is historic fiction, but I feel like I understand so much more about the players involved after reading one of Shaara's books.