Edison McDaniels Releases Civil War Novel NOT ONE AMONG THEM WHOLE

Announcing a Civil War novel of stunning intensity & great beauty. In the tradition of Cold Mountain and The Killer Angels comes NOT ONE AMONG THEM WHOLE, a novel by Edison McDaniels. Historical fiction, with singularly unique scenes of battlefield surgery and medicine.

It is the summer of 1863 and the greatest battle ever fought on American soil is in full tilt. Southern Pennsylvania has become one great grinding stone and thousands of men are dead or dying in its wake. In this tilted landscape, reputations are made, careers are ruined, and men are driven to the brink in the wake of two armies intent on killing one another. Opportunity is everywhere...

For the men and officers who fight the battle, it's a kill or be killed world, where salvation is ever just a bullet away...

For the surgeons laboring over the many wounded, opportunity knocks at the tables, where the price of a man's life is all too often an arm or a leg. The cost to the surgeons, however, will be much higher...

For one undertaker in particular, the dead are a canvas and his ability to make a body reflect the living individual is nothing short of amazing. For Jupiter Jones, the burgeoning dead themselves are the opportunity...

And finally, for one teenage boy and former slave, alive only because his father had the courage to bury him when the end came, opportunity comes in the form of the boy with a creel and only one shoe, who may or may not be a ghost...

It is the summer of 1863 and humanity is under siege. What happens next amid the carnage and human flotsam will be unholy, unnerving, and all but unbearable, with only one thing certain: nobody will escape unscathed.

Here, the dead are the lucky ones.

For the living, hell is in session.

And it's the devil's own day.

David Poyer, author of the over twenty-five novels, including his popular contemporary nautical fiction series featuring CDR Dan Lenson (The Med, The Crisis, Korea Straight, The Towers) called NOT ONE AMONG THEM WHOLE, "A terrific achievement...at first glance it resembles The Killer Angels and Cold Mountain-and its artistry rivals those great novels."

Taylor Polites, author of the acclaimed civil war novel, The Rebel Wife, calls Edison McDaniels, "An amazingly talented writer . . ." and further states "NOT ONE AMONG THEM WHOLE is a magnificently harrowing trip into the bloody horrors of the battle of Gettysburg, populated with unforgettable characters and written with stunning precision and beauty."

The novel focuses in large part on a group of surgeons struggling amid the chaos and carnage of the Battle of Gettysburg. The vistas are stunning and settings are intense and rendered with a realism that only a writer with a vast knowledge of civil war medicine, a surgeon's knowledge of trauma and the body's intricate workings, and the consummate skills of a top notch writer could pull off. Edison McDaniels, a neurosurgeon and award winning fiction writer, qualifies on all three levels. This unique skill set makes the novel hum with a fierce intensity that moves the story along at a breathtaking, if not quite exhausting, pace.

Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart. The surgeons labor under unspeakable conditions and throughout the novel the horrendous wounds and the procedures of the embattled surgeons are described in great detail. Perhaps the most interesting operation concerns the trepanning of a young soldier who has been shot in the head. One of the surgeons, Boyd is his name and he has become addicted to laudanum, performs the very tricky drilling into the boy's skull. The tension is palpable and the medical narrative authoritative under McDaniels's pen. He trusts you have come into his world to experience reality and to live in that world long enough to have your sense of history deepened. He never disappoints, either with the medical narrative or the storytelling-which runs through NOT ONE AMONG THEM WHOLE like a finely honed razor.

Throughout the novel, the immense suffering and loss is underscored by two opposing soldiers lying on the battlefield undiscovered, bonding in ways that demonstrate both the strength of the human spirit and how inconsequential they are to the totality of the struggle.

This novel will appeal to those with a sense of history (Civil War re-enactors will love the detail), those who enjoy reading about medicine and surgery, and especially those in the medical field (paramedics, nurses, physicians, techs of one sort or another, medical students, EMTs).

Available now at $8.99 for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, & other eBook readers from Northampton House Press.