![]() So far it all sounds rather depressing, but it isn’t. Although there are monstrous acts, this is not a tale of monsters but of ordinary people driven to their limits and losing part (although rarely all) of their humanity. It is by turns tender and heartwarming, then it plunges the reader into the hellish brutality and suffering that any war – but especially a civil war – engenders. James Carlos Blake wasn’t actually alive in those days, but reading this novel I was almost convinced that he had been. ![]() ![]() It was this desperate group that Anderson was himself to join, spreading terror (and inspiring a lot of adoration, depending on which side you were on) and earning him the name of “Bloody Bill” following great personal tragedy. The Kansas-Missouri borderlands where they lived were split between Kansas Unionist “redlegs” and Anderson’s beloved Missouri Confederate “bushwackers,” the most notorious band of which was led by a man named Quantrill. Their lives – and those of their friends – would probably have passed unremarkably enough but the Civil War was to change all that. They were a musical family, fond of poetry, and both Bill and his brother Jim were partial to a spot of horse stealing. ![]() William (Bill) Anderson lived peacefully enough on his parents’ farm together with his brother and three sisters. ![]()
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