to Richmond or Bust

By: S. L. Kotar, J. E. Gessler

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

“to Richmond or Bust” People called it the Civil War, but it was decidedly uncivil. Newspaper reporters styled it, “The War of Brother against Brother,” but the wounds cut far deeper than that. Southerners referred to the years 1861-1865 as “The War of Northern Aggression.” It was “Mr. Lincoln’s War,” “the War over Slavery,” “the War to save the Union.” It was everything, in fact, but, “The War to End all Wars.” Rudy Blake went to war to die but he did not die. Instead, he suffered through one soul-shattering defeat after another, until his private world shrunk to nothing but marching to hell, fighting senseless battles, protecting the vanguard of Hardee’s decimated Corps and suffering personal torments that nearly destroyed both his body and his mind. After the final degradation of surrender at Durham Station, Rudy has one resolution in mind: get to Richmond where he hopes to make one positive outcome before fulfilling the prophesy he made to himself after the fall of Atlanta. He must find some way to grant Benjamin Montgomery’s wish to “give back” and make amends for what he had committed during “the Late Unpleasantness.” To do so, these two starving and beaten men must subjugate themselves to yet another humiliation: the attainment of a pardon, before attempting to establish any sense of normalcy in their beleaguered lives. Hardly recognizable to his old friend Mae Williams of the Weeping Willow Saloon, Rudy makes arrangements for his friend and then prepares himself for the greatest and perhaps the most perilous journey of his life: across the Atlantic to England and Rose Theodore.