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Title: A thoroughly good read
Review: I thought the book was a fine first novel. The language was well-crafted and vivid, the characters felt real and unpredictable, and the story kept me reading continuously. There were moments that felt a bit preachy or sentimental, for example, the various talks among the soldiers about fighting for the freedom of all men, and so forth, but those conversations struck me as things that Civil War soldiers might actually say, a level of sentimentality that was present at the time, and, while a bit out of place in our society today, perfectly reasonable for the era Hummel was writing about. I came away from the novel with its characters still on my mind, some of the lines and images still reverberating for me. In all, a very good reading experience.
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