Laurel Monteille Covey, had she lived today, would have a nice neat diagnosis of a terrible problem: post traumatic stress disorder. But as a nurse during the Civil War, she has no such knowledge of that disorder and instead suffers nightmares and the slow feeling that she is going crazy. Her husband dead in the war, Laurel travels the country at the war's end to deliver the final words of dying soldiers to their families. Almost to the end of her travels, she meets up with Creede Forester, a desperate father searching out the nurse who cared for his son in the hopes that the boy really hadn't died.

Creede knows he'll get bad news, but there's a part of him that hopes that Austin survived. When he meets Laurel, he feels the true devastation of knowing his child is dead, and even worse, that he had no last words to comfort him. Despite his grief, Creede joins Laurel on her travels because she certainly isn't safe alone.

These two lonely, heartbroken souls have a long way to go to find each other. Laurel must find some kind of peace with all the death she saw (much of which she's convinced she could have affected if she'd made decisions differently). Creede must accept his son's death and that his own life is still worth living.

What a sad book. No matter how much joy these two eventually were able to find in each other, no matter how much we're reminded that there is always something to live through -- the emotional depths these two characters must plow are overwhelming. Laurel, in particular, leaves you feeling as if her torment is somehow a little your own burden now. Which means, of course, that this was very well written. An excellent read and a new perspective on the Civil War.