Lizzie and Rosanna are cousins. But when the Civil War breaks out, Lizzie finds herself committed to the cause of the Union, while Rosie is swept up in the passions of the old south. Torn in their alliances, each girl finds herself grappling with the brutality of war, and the elusive promise of love, until the battle at Gettysburg brings them together once agin. Grade 6–9—In 1861, the Confederacy has just declared its independence from the Union, but life goes on much as usual in the quiet town of Gettysburg. Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Allbauer and her cousin Rosanna, recently arrived from Virginia, have big plans to attend the Ladies' Seminary together in the fall. Then Lizzie's father and brother enlist in the Union army and she must stay home to help her mother run the family butcher shop. Rosanna flees back to Richmond after a Gettysburg beau is killed in one of the early battles. Torn between her romanticized view of the war and her parents' conservative rules, Rosanna impulsively agrees to marry a former beau, John Wilcox. Within a month of marriage, he is injured, and Rosanna rushes to meet up with the Virginia Infantry so that she can care for him. Realizing that she has a gift for healing, she stays on with her husband's company as a nurse. Chapters alternate between Rosanna's journal entries of her life as a Confederate nurse and Lizzie's accounts of the events leading up to the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. While Klein's extensive research is evident, the alternating voices have only limited success: readers will be drawn to Lizzie's genuine warmth, but frivolous Rosanna's leap to the ultra-responsible wife and nurse and the stilted dialogues in her journal entries stretch credibility. Still, Klein's weaving of the young women's stories to a shared conclusion gives a fresh perspective on the complexities of the Civil War.— Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. When her cousin Rosanna sweeps into Gettysburg in 1860, quiet, dutiful Lizzie can’t help but feel a little daunted. Rosanna's parents have sent her from Richmond to separate her from a romance her parents considered inappropriate. Soon the war consumes everyone, though, and tempers roil over questions of secession, slavery, race relations, and impending battles. After Lizzie’s father and brother join the Union cause, the family needs to fend for itself. Rosanna returns to Richmond and then undertakes a remarkable coming-of-age journey as an army nurse, learning on the job. Lizzie manages her family’s butcher shop and likewise has to deal with the blunt reality of battle at her doorstep. Terrific action and lively characterizations move the story along well. The depictions of a slave and a freed slave may lack dimensions, but Klein succeeds in bringing home the horror of war within a finely told story. Grades 7-10. --Anne O'Malley LISA KLEIN's first book for Bloomsbury was Ophelia . She is currently at work on her own retelling of Macbeth for teens. A former professor of English, she lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her family.