After years of writing historical academic papers, USA Today bestselling author Gina Danna has found the time to write her own historical romance novels. Under the supervision of her dogs, she writes amid a library of research books, with her only true break spending time with her other lifelong dream, her Arabian horse. With him, her muse can play. Learn more about Gina and her books at her website.
The Better Angels & The Civil War
The American Civil War – not quite the normal setting for an historical romance. But for a historian and Civil War reenactor/living historian, it has a huge array of possibilities for a book. So the result for me is my series Hearts Touched by Fire. My 4th book in the series has just been released this summer and I’m thrilled to be able to tell you about it. It is titled, The Better Angels, the phrase pulled from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address in March, 1861, when he says directly to the seceding South:
“…We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
This book is the story of Francois Fontaine of Louisiana and Ada Lorrance of Pennsylvania. Francois was introduced in book 1, The Wicked North, as Jack’s older brother. Francois is a bit of a scoundrel, and his character definitely needed to be saved so this book is his redemption story.
Ada is a doctor with the Union Army, though she serves as a nurse, because U.S. Army regulations refused any female physicians. In the 19th century, few universities had medical schools with a slim number allowing women. Any woman doctor of the period was mostly refrained to treating women and children and that attitude applied to the Federal Army, despite their need for help. Wanting to aid the North as best she could, Ada signs on as a nurse, of Dorothea Dix’s nursing corps, and is assigned to help the field hospitals of General Meade in Virginia. There, at times, she finds a way to utilize her medical training in helping the wounded, though that brings many conflicts with the commanding surgeon. Ada is a very strong-minded lady, and her determination to help is her driving factor.
She is also an abolitionist, hoping the Union wins to free the slaves. But Francois comes from a wealthy plantation in Louisiana, where they raise sugar, using slaves as their laborers. His family has done this for generations, and he saw no issues about it. But when he ends up wounded and under her care, the war takes on a new meaning, because to her, he stands for everything she hates….what will she do when he steals her heart?
Writing this series has been fabulous and involved. As a trained historian (I have my BA, MA and work towards my PhD in History), I want to craft a tale that is accurate and takes my reader back to that time. To get a glimpse into these people who went to war during the most pivotal time in U.S. history. These people are real – you meet the generals and politicians who went to war, both the North and South. Their lifestyles, thoughts are pulled from research books and time actually portraying them as a Living Historian. As an historian, it is the most fascinating time in defining this country, and in so many ways, has yet to be resolved.
So come back with me, to the time of Antebellum US and the War Between the States (the US Government’s official name of the rebellion), and explore how these people lived, their fears, their excitement and loss. And see if Francois can be redeemed!
The Living Historian's Creed
By Bruce Catton, Civil War Historian
- We are the people to whom the past is forever speaking.
- We listen to it because we cannot help ourselves, for the past speaks to us with many voices.
- Far out of that dark nowhere which is the time before we were born, men who were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone went through fire and storm to break a path to the future.
- We are part of that future they died for.
- They are part of the past that brought the future.
- What they did--the lives they lived, the sacrifices they made, the stories they told and the songs they sang and, finally, the deaths they died--make up a part of our own experience.
- We cannot cut ourselves off from it.
- It is as real as something that happened last week.
- It is a basic part of our heritage as Americans.
The Better Angels
Hearts Touched by Fire Series, Book 4
In 1864, Francois Fontaine has a life of leisure as part of the planter class in Louisiana.
Everything changes when the woman he loves marries another man. Heartbroken, he flees east to joining the army in an attempt to forget. But in Virginia, wounded and captured, he quickly discovers that an injured Confederate soldier faces a bleak future.
Dr. Ada Lorrance wants to help in the cause against Southern slavery, but the army medical department will not take a women doctor, yet they need nurses so she bites her lip and joins as one, soon to discover that when the surgeons are overwhelmed, she is left to doctor the prisoners. She finds herself attracted to a rebel, a man who stands for everything she despises, making her hope he rots, but her heart falls for him.
Thrown together by war, Francois and Ada find themselves battling over their beliefs and fighting against the growing affections that is fragile enough to pull them apart.
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