Publisher's Synopsis
While most stories of the American Civil War focus on the great battles in the East-Gettysburg and Antietam-the war spanned the entire continent, and some of its most compelling events occurred in the West, where the drama of the war was set against the backdrop of encroaching "civilization" and the path toward statehood. The Deserving tells the story of the war in the West through the eyes of two soldiers on opposites sides and a young woman who is loved by one and hunted by the other.
E'mile Deschampes is just eighteen when he joins the Union army. He is badly wounded during his unit's first engagement with the Confederate Arizona Brigade, under the command of General Henry Hopkins Sibley-one of several historical figures in the novel.
Deschampes is rescued by Carmen Reyes, a local girl. The two of them face death again at the hands of rebel soldiers, this time in the person of a cold-blooded lieutenant, Aubrey McGrath. The Confederates are driven out of the New Mexico Territory, leaving Deschampes in possession of a cryptic document that may lead him to buried treasure. But Aubrey McGrath intervenes and reopens past unhealed wounds from a War that cannot be forgotten and does not go away. Destiny demands one final battle between the two to resolve old conflicts, and to possibly create a future free from the oppressive beliefs of yesteryear. .
