Soldiers of the Southern Cross: Three Stories of the War

(Apollonian Press) This volume is a companion to Conquest’s Virginia, the Gray and the Green (1990), a collection of six short stories about various Virginians during and after the American Civil War. The three stories in Soldiers of the Southern Cross feature experiences of Americans on both sides of the war, including the fall from grace of a Confederate colonel who “reports sick” on the third day at Gettysburg, a Yankee sergeant’s “fight with the devil,” and the post-war account of an unreconstructed preacher. Conquest is the author of two collections of plays, Achilles and Company and The Widow’s Might , the novels The Gun and Glory of Granite Hendley and The Way of the Eagle (a volume of two short novels), and a book of poetry called Lays and Legends of Virginia and Otherwhere .