Henry's Pride

Henry's Pride
340 Pages
ISBN 978-1-537-53438-1

Henry's Pride is a wide-sweeping novel of the Civil War told from the perspective of two families, one from Minnesota and the other from Georgia. Henry Hancock is a Minnesota tenant farmer who reluctantly but dutifully goes to war to save the Union. Darius Morgan, the son of a Georgia plantation owner eagerly enlists in the Confederate army to save what he considers to be his rightful legacy. Other characters, whose stories are interwoven include Hamilton Stark, the cowardly yet vicious overseer from the Morgan plantation and Adam Kendrick, a gentle but dutiful southern soldier, who must keep his anti-slavery sentiments hidden. Meet also Joshua Gibbons, a Union chaplain and Hosea Billings the vindictive captain of guards at a Federal prison camp.

The story is told through the usual means of narrative and dialogue but also through numerous letters written back and forth between the characters expressing their loneliness, fear, pride, and other emotions associated with what the title character calls "the nation's nasty business". The story also portrays the devastating effect of war on soldiers and families alike - wounds both physical and mental as the characters deal with battle injuries and with what is now call PTSD. There is Jonas Hancock, Henry's brother, who is injured and mustered out early in the war but continuously deals with haunting memories. There is Henry himself, tormented by reminders of what he has had to see and do. Henry's Pride is a war novel that, in sense, is also an anti-war novel.

Characters on both sides examine themselves and must decide whether or not their respective Country's objectives are worth the sacrifices they and thousands of others are called upon to make. Henry's Pride is not about generals and military strategy or troop movements. It's about ordinary soldiers and families each trying to find their way through the "madness" that is the Civil War.

Greg Seeley

About Greg Seeley (Kansas City, Missouri & Kansas Author)

Greg Seeley

Greg Seeley was raised on a farm north of Afton, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a major in history and received his Master's Degree from the University of Iowa. Greg is a retired certified public accountant and lives in Overland Park, Kansas with his wife Carolyn, a retired math teacher. Henry's Pride is Greg's first novel. He is also the author of a book of verse entitled The Horse Lawyer and other Poems (2014).

Greg has had a lifelong interest in history. Though Henry's Pride is a work of fiction, it was inspired by Greg's reading of letters that his great grandfather sent home while serving as an infantry sergeant in the Civil War.