#Deserters – Rosepoint Publishing

Book Blurb:

An immersive adventure story set during the American Civil War follows four travelers as they escape toward the Western territories.

It is fall 1864, and Robert Riley has deserted his Army of the Potomac unit outside Petersburg, Virginia. Exhausted from years of war and worried about his motherless sons in Ohio, he returns to collect thirteen-year-old Michael and Sean, three years older, and flees to the Western territories. Along the way, he encounters Janey, an orphan at sixteen, who is also eager to go West. When Riley sees in her a quickness of mind, a brand of cunning that mirrors his own, he is persuaded to take her along.

Crossing the lower Midwest on horseback with little money and few possessions, the four are pursued by a wily private detective after the reward for turning in Riley. He manages to thwart the ragtag group, who abandon their plan of crossing the plains. They slip away by train to Chicago, and there, in that cold, stinking, dangerous metropolis, just before the 1864 election, they meet with problems beyond Riley’s ability to resolve. All four find themselves alone, at the mercy of fortune . . . and the fortune hunter, who finally gets the chance to face down his nemesis.

Deserters alternates between the perspectives of the four major characters as their relationships grow and shift, and as each of them strives to forge their way forward in the late war’s murky upheaval. A book whose antecedents include Charles Portis’s True Grit and Paulette Jiles’s News of the World, Gabriel’s immersive novel is an adventure story with psychological intricacy, emotional intensity, and historical heft.

His Review:

The tragedy that was the American Civil War took more American lives than any other conflict in history. The issue was the northern states fighting a group of southern states. Sometimes even brothers within a family were split between their loyalties to the area they were born and the flag they chose.

This book concentrates on the misery that was felt on both sides and the young people who decided that they did not want to fight in that war. One of the facts of this conflict was that it was illegal to avoid conscription into this war. Either on the side of the north or the south, avoiding being conscripted was punishable by death or immediately being sent back to the front, sometimes without a weapon.

Jerry Gabriel explores the paranoia and fear that any deserter had. Escaping this turmoil was fraught with danger. Even young children were employed to help find the deserters. Bounty hunters made a living capturing these individuals and getting them back to their respective armies.

The time was brutal and vicious and avoiding capture meant never going into a town if it could be avoided. Bounties being paid during times of economic tragedy resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being put back into inhumane prisons with no future. Read this story and witness the many facets of the Civil War not taught in schools. 4.5 stars – CE Williams

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this ebook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Travel Adventure Fiction, Action & Adventure Literary Fiction, Literary Fiction
Publisher: Acre Books
Publication Date: May 15, 2026
Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Jerry Gabriel is the author of two books of fiction, Drowned Boy and The Let Go. His first book, Drowned Boy, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and the Towson Prize for Literature. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children, where he teaches writing at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.