The Better Angels of Our Nature

A London native and self-described Civil War autodidact, Gylanders begins her U.S. debut on the eve of the Battle of Shiloh when the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman finds a young boy in oversized blues hiding in the bushes. The boy will say only that he's Jesse Davis, an orphan who comes from "far from here." Jesse is persistent in wanting to stay on, however, and Sherman puts him to work as an orderly in the field hospital. Sherman soon discovers (rather awkwardly) that Jesse is, in fact, a girl of about 15. He threatens to banish her, but never follows through, as Jesse seems talismanic: at Shiloh, Sherman has four horses shot out from under him and survives. The action moves to the siege of Vicksburg and concludes with Sherman's army off to Chattanooga (which surely means a sequel, since it puts us at November 1863, more than a year before war's end). Gylanders knows the era thoroughly (there were several such gender switches documented during the war) and writes convincingly about the horrors of the battlefield and the field hospital. In the enigmatic Jesse, she has a character who gives a compelling perspective on the times. (Nov.)