Difficult Run: A Novel

James Osterhaus draws readers into the simple life of Joe Thompson, who is struggling to know what happened to him twenty years before, during the Civil War. When he tries to remember, the shadows descend and cloud out his memories.

The story opens with a dream that has terrified him since the war--some unnamed battlefield where he is crawling through the smoking underbrush, trying not to get shot. After his wife has finally had enough of his abuse, she kicks him out of their house along Dif...