Consecrated Dust: A Novel of the Civil War North

On September 17, 1862, an explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, kills seventy-eight girls rolling bullet cartridges for the Union army. News of the catastrophe is buried, however, beneath the horrendous casualty reports coming out of the Battle of Antietam, fought on the very same day.

Inspired by these two real-life tragedies, Consecrated Dust tells the wartime story of four young northerners - feminist, Clara Ambrose; soldier, Garrett Cameron; industrialist, Edga...