Freedom's Altar
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Price, Charles F., PUBLISHER: John F. Blair Publisher, The Civil War has left the Curtis family with a dead daughter, two dead sons, vengeful neighbors, and a once-grand home now broken down. Just as debilitating is Judge Madison Curtis's guilt over his actions in wartime, when he sacrificed another family to save his own. The most immediate reminder of the judge's past sins is a man he once held in bondage, who has returned to the mountains of western North Carolina after serving the Union army. In slavery, the Curtises knew him as Black Gamaliel, but he now insists on being known by his proper name -- Daniel McFee. They achieve an uneasy peace as Daniel proposes a sharecropping arrangement and begins a new life in freedom. But the judge perceives that the opportunity for true racial reconciliation after the war is being squandered. Militating against it is an antihero who would elevate the blacks by crushing the landed whites -- a demagogue by day and a killer by night. This novel examines those sacrificed on freedom's altar, from former Confederate soldiers to former slaves, all of whom struggle against bitterness to discover their better selves at an hour of need.