Sherman's Chaplain

With Atlanta in ruins behind them, sixty-thousand calloused and confident Union army veterans follow William Tecumseh Sherman to the next objective: Savannah. A newcomer is among them now: Ellis Brantley, a charismatic young seminary graduate with a gift for preaching. His powerful sermons quickly vault him from regimental chaplain to a senior chaplain's post at Sherman's headquarters. There, he must contend with the flinty and unpredictable general, a hostile captain who mocks his beliefs, a church-burning, half-insane soldier and, most dangerous of all, his own conviction that he knows God's will - a conviction that will lead him to brush aside a prophetic warning from a combat-seasoned officer: "You don't know war. You don't know how quickly lives are taken or changed forever."
 David Bellin is a retired advertising executive, the winner of a CLIO statuette, the ad world's "Oscar." He and his wife live in the dairy farm countryside of New York's Finger Lakes. His previous book, The Children's War, a novel of Northern Ireland, was praised as "Contemporary fiction with something substantive to say" (Library Journal), "A gripping story, well told" (Bookviews), "An incisive view of the Irish conflict...a moving tale" (West Coast Review) and "A satisfying novel that illuminates compassionate souls on both sides of a terrible struggle" (Publisher's Weekly)