Christmas at Carnton

by Tamera Alexander Book 0.5 in the Carnton Novels series.

First published 2017

Amazon

2.5(5)

In 1863, widowed Aletta Prescott faces eviction while trying to support her young son during the Confederate war effort. A position connected with a Women’s Relief Society auction at Carnton offers a possible livelihood. Captain Jake Winston, a sharpshooter recovering from a head wound suffered at Chickamauga, is ordered to help with the event while confronting the possible loss of the military skill that defined him.

The novella introduces Carnton before the Battle of Franklin and focuses on the home-front labour through which women supplied soldiers and sustained displaced families. Aletta and Jake’s growing affection is inseparable from grief, uncertainty and Christian ideas of sacrificial love, making Christmas a test of practical generosity rather than sentimental escape from war.