Exploring the Drama at Perryville

 Adding fictional dialogue to factual situations, Willever describes the events that preceded the battle through the eyes of leading participants.

We get to know Union Gens. George Thomas and Phillip Sheridan, Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk and J. Stoddard Johnston, a colonel on Bragg's staff who had a home in Georgetown and would later be a Louisville newspaper editor and Kentucky secretary of state.

Willever's dialogue doesn't have the cadence of Shaara's. But by putting words in the mouths of soldiers and citizens, he puts flesh on their long-dead bones.

He ends his book with Bragg camped near Harrodsburg on the day before the battle, convinced that the larger part of the Union army was miles away, marching on Frankfort, when it was in fact almost at his doorstep.

Willever, who was at the Perryville re-enactment earlier this month, said he will cover the battle in a companion book he's working on now. If you want to know who won, you'll have to wait.

Ric Manning • Louisville Courier-Journal • October 24, 2009

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