Thursday, February 6, 2014

I Shall Be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCabe


I Shall Be Near to You is set at the start of the US Civil War. As young Jeremiah enlists in the Union Army, his young bride Rosetta is desperate and runs away to join him. She cuts her hair, binds her breasts, and pretends to be a young man in order to stay with Jeremiah. They don't expect the war to last, hoping that the Confederate Army will give up before their group has to engage. But Rosetta, now Ross Stone, trains and fights with the rest of the young soldiers - refusing to leave her husband.

McCabe's work is fiction but it's based on researched accounts of women who did hide their identities and enlisted to join their loved ones in battle. Part love story, part adventure and war, I Shall Be Near to You is an absorbing read.


  • ISBN-10: 0804137722 - Hardcover $18.45
  • Publisher: Crown (January 28, 2014), 320 pages.
  • Review copy courtesy of the Amazon Vine Reviewers Program.

About the Author:
Erin Lindsay McCabe studied literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and taught high school English before completing her MFA at St. Mary's College of California in 2010.  She has taught composition at St. Mary's and Butte College and resides in Northern California with her husband and son and a small menagerie that includes one dog, four cats, two horses, ten chickens and two goats.

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