Unlikely Bonds - E-book - ePub

This book is the first in a planned trilogy, 'Dixie After the War.' Unlikely Bonds is a story set in the post-Civil War era. It tells of the journey from a POW camp in Rock Island, Illinois, to the McGee Plantation in Alabama. Sampson had been Benjamin McGee's slave before the war. Sampsonm being loyal to Benjamin had joined the Confederate army to help Benjamin fight the Union. Benjamin and Sampson are captured by the Union Army in Chattanooga, TN.
They march under the Union flag to a POW camp on Rock Island, Illinois. At the war's end, they begin their journey home to Alabama. Benjamin was shot in the leg in the war, which makes traveling slow. They are barefoot, hungry, and tired, forcing them to stop at homes along the way to beg for food. Reaching Ripley, Tennessee, fifty miles north of Memphis, they stop at a small farm where they meet  Sarah, a Union War widow. Sarah owns a small farm and cares for her ailing mother.
She invites the men into her home to share a meal with them and allows them to sleep in the hay of her barn. Benjamin learns that Sarah had managed to conceal a mule from the armies throughout the war. Benjamin quickly derives that he desperately needs the mule. He sleeps very little in the hayloft for thinking about the mule. The following morning, he shows up at Sarah's door and asks her to marry him and move to Alabama. Sampson finds a singing job on Beale Street, Memphis.
Here, he is falsely accused of murder. Will Benjamin leave his new wife at the farm to look for the true murderer before Sampson is hanged?  This is a story of loyalty, forgiveness, and friendship. The true meaning of love is when it is tested and triumphs.