01 Jun Glen Craney The Cotillion Brigade The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @glencraney @maryanneyarde

FEATURED AUTHOR: GLEN CRANEY

It is a pleasure to introduce Glen Craney as part of The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held from May 24th – June 4th, 2021. Glen Craney is the author of the historical fiction novel, The Cotillion Brigade (A Novel of the Civil War and the Most Famous Female Militia in American History), which was released by Brigid’s Fire Press on 15th March 2021 (399 Pages). 

Below are highlights of The Cotillion Brigade and Glen Craney’s author bio. As part of the blog tour, Glen has provided a guest post on the fascinating background of General Patrick Cleburne, a character in his novel. The moment Glen mentioned that General Patrick Cleburne was one of the greatest Irish warriors in the civil war, I immediately connected with the General’s Celtic warrior legacy along with the most famous female militia in American history.  

HIGHLIGHTS: THE COTILLION BRIGADE

The Cotillion Brigade (A Novel of the Civil War and the Most Famous Female Militia in American History)

by Glen Craney

Georgia burns.
Sherman’s Yankees are closing in.
Will the women of LaGrange run or fight?

Based on the true story of the celebrated Nancy Hart Rifles, The Cotillion Brigade is an epic novel of the Civil War’s ravages on family and love, the resilient bonds of sisterhood in devastation, and the miracle of reconciliation between bitter enemies.

“Gone With The Wind meets A League Of Their Own.” — John Jeter, The Plunder Room

1856. Sixteen-year-old Nannie Colquitt Hill makes her debut in the antebellum society of the Chattahoochee River plantations. A thousand miles to the north, a Wisconsin farm boy, Hugh LaGrange, joins an Abolitionist crusade to ban slavery in Bleeding Kansas.

Five years later, secession and total war against the homefronts of Dixie hurl them toward a confrontation unrivaled in American history.

Nannie defies the traditions of Southern gentility by forming a women’s militia and drilling it four long years to prepare for battle. With their men dead, wounded, or retreating with the Confederate armies, only Captain Nannie and her Fighting Nancies stand between their beloved homes and the Yankee torches.

Hardened into a slashing Union cavalry colonel, Hugh duels Rebel generals Joseph Wheeler and Nathan Bedford Forrest across Tennessee and Alabama. As the war churns to a bloody climax, he is ordered to drive a burning stake deep into the heart of the Confederacy.

Yet one Georgia town—which by mocking coincidence bears Hugh’s last name—stands defiant in his path.

Read the remarkable story of the Southern women who formed America’s most famous female militia and the Union officer whose life they changed forever.

Buy Links:

Amazon UK  ♠  Amazon US  ♠  Amazon CA  ♠  Amazon AU  ♠  Kobo:   ♠  AppleBooks   ♠  Barnes & Noble 

AUTHOR BIO: GLEN CRANEY

A graduate of Indiana University School of Law and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Glen Craney practiced trial law before joining the Washington, D.C. press corps to write about national politics and the Iran-contra trial for Congressional Quarterly magazine. In 1996, the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded him the Nicholl Fellowship prize for best new screenwriting. His debut historical novel, The Fire and the Light, was named Best New Fiction by the National Indie Excellence Awards. He is a three-time Finalist/Honorable Mention winner of Foreword Magazine’s Book-of-the-Year and a Chaucer Award winner for Historical Fiction. His books have taken readers to Occitania during the Albigensian Crusade, the Scotland of Robert Bruce, Portugal during the Age of Discovery, the trenches of France during World War I, the battlefields of the Civil War, and the American Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. He lives in Malibu, California.

Connect with Glen:

Website  ♠  Facebook   ♠  Twitter:  ♠  Pinterest   ♠  Goodreads   ♠  Amazon Author Page 

GUEST POST: GLEN CRANEY

Thank you, Linnea, for inviting me as a guest on your blog.

I know your fans and readers love all things Celtic, so I wanted to share the story of one of the greatest Irish warriors of the American Civil War: Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, often called the “Stonewall of the West.”

A fun aspect of writing historical novels is stumbling upon secondary characters who merit a book of their own. Cleburne plays a small but important part in my latest release, The Cotillion Brigade, based on the true story of the Nancy Hart Rifles of Georgia, the most famous female militia in American history.

Why do I find Cleburne so fascinating? Maybe it’s because I share his Irish heritage. Or maybe because he was more interested in winning battles than playing politics. Or maybe because of his endearing lisp, incurred from a mouth wound at the battle of Richmond. Or maybe because my great-great-uncle, a Union captain with the Twelfth Kentucky Infantry, stood within yards of Cleburne when the Confederate general met his death in Tennessee.

Courageous and unflagging in battle, Cleburne was shy in social settings. Born in 1828 in County Cork, Ireland, he failed to follow in his physician father’s footsteps after flunking the Trinity College of Medicine’s entrance exam. Orphaned at fifteen, he enlisted in the British Army and attained the rank of corporal. He soon became disenchanted and emigrated to America, where he eventually settled in Arkansas. He found work in a Helena pharmacy and became fast friends with the politically connected Thomas Hindman, who would also attain the rank of major general in the Confederate army.

When the South seceded from the Union and war broke out, Cleburne enlisted as a private in the First Arkansas Regiment, not out of fervor for preserving the institution of slavery, but out of loyalty to his friends who helped him after he arrived from Ireland. This Celtic allegiance to compatriots would serve him well throughout the war, establishing him with Nathan Bedford Forrest as the only two Confederate soldiers who rose from the rank of private to major general. Yet his reputation in Richmond government circles flagged when he recommended offering freedom to slaves who were willing to fight in the Confederate armies.

Standing as best man at General William Hardee’s wedding, Cleburne met an Alabama belle, Sue Tarleton, and fell instantly in love. After a whirlwind courtship of two weeks, Cleburne proposed to her, and she accepted. Off to the Atlanta Campaign in the spring of 1864, Cleburne vowed to escape the war for a couple of days and marry Tarleton in LaGrange, Georgia, the location of my novel.

The marriage was not to be. Pressed hard by General William Tecumseh Sherman, Cleburne could not be spared even a night, and Tarleton, disappointed after waiting in LaGrange for two weeks, reluctantly returned to Mobile. In December of 1864, she was walking in her garden when she heard a paperboy shout a headline: “General Cleburne is dead.” She fainted and spent the next year confined to her bedroom in mourning. Her “Beau Pat,” she learned, had bitterly opposed a suicidal charge at Franklin, Tennessee. Yet when ordered to carry it out by General John Bell Hood, Cleburne adopted the Celtic acceptance of Fate. “If we are to die,” he told his fellow officers, “let us die like men.”

General Robert E. Lee remembered Cleburne—the highest-ranking Irish-born officer in American military history—as “a meteor shining from a clouded sky.”

General Cleburne Statue at Ringgold Gap, Georgia.

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