Scruples on the Line

Authentic voices shape this fresh look at a familiar story, the American Civil War, beginning with the rapid buildup of tension between North and South and continuing into early summer of 1862. But the narrative grip comes through the eyes of civilians, trapped in the conflicts of obedience to government and historic refusal to participate in warfare. Their options press with insistence (enlisting, fleeing, buying a substitute, or paying a fee) as the demands intensify. From the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to Chicago and Iowa, five narrators tell the experiences of Amish, Mennonite, and German Baptist communities of conscience. Whether following an inquisitive girl in the mountains, an eager young man transplanted in the city's promise, or a bishop determined to hold the line with pioneers in Iowa, readers will choose their heroes- and villains-in-the-making. In this opening book of the series the ominous shadows of duty and belief intertwine with characters' desires and fears, leading toward restless resolutions.

Set against the backdrop of three major American Civil War battles at Antietam, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg, the same five narrators return to tell the stories of what happened in their communities of conscience. Members of Mennonite, Amish, and German Baptist churches choose their loyalties, when their traditional belief of not participating in warfare collides with the demands of Union and Confederate forces. As state and national military drafts and exemptions sweep through the North and South, women and children find themselves raising crops in the Shenandoah Valley, while the "menfolk" join up or flee. Fretz Funk, a young man in Chicago, lives with uncertainty also, immersed in his new lumber business, disenchanted with the glorification of war on both sides, and disappointed by President Lincoln's slowness in establishing equality for dark-skinned people. A bishop in Iowa fears the growing fissures in the Amish church and sorts through his own failures. A family in western Virginia faces the repeated absence of Poppa, when he is forced to work as a teamster. The war pushes relentlessly from the summer of 1862 through January of 1864, creating a cumulative pressure of upheaval, dissension, resistance, and teetering faith among civilians.