Hiram's Hope: The Return of Isaiah - E-book - ePub

Near the conclusion of the Civil War, a sick and dying Isaiah Rinehart of the 82nd Ohio, captured with other comrades at Gettysburg, is left for dead at Andersonville, the infamous Confederate prison festering in the war-torn back country of Georgia. Leaving Isaiah behind, his heart-broken comrades limp out of the filthy, putrid stockade and head for home. Upon arriving in Ohio with a broken body and a guilt-ridden mind, Isaiah's friend Hiram Terman, struggles to regain his life from the savagery of the Civil War and 17 grinding months as a prisoner of war.
He is a man without hope. Hiram's Hope: The Return of Isaiah tells in vivid detail how Isaiah survives, not only Andersonville but the harrowing journey to Vicksburg where he again faces death on the ill-fated, overloaded riverboat steamer Sultana. Max Terman weaves a story around this tragedy on the Mississippi with the Lincoln Funeral Train, a woman left at Andersonville, and a veteran's struggle to recover his life as threads in an intricate tale about the last days of the American Civil War.
It is a story of men pushed beyond human limits, of survival, of faith tried and tested, and how one man helps another find hope. At a Veterans Reunion in 1913 the men of the 82nd Ohio meet again. The bonds are as strong as ever as their cheers resound over a reunited country and a people set on the path to freedom.