The Thirteenth Rainbow - Robert McKinney

"The Thirteenth Rainbow" is a novel set during the waning years of the American Civil War. It weaves together the stories of Daniel, an enslaved man who flees a harsh plantation hoping to take the blame off his wife Alaani who has killed a brutal Mulatto overseer; Patrick, a young Irishman who is shanghaied to America and later becomes an officer over part of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry; Iridiana, a beautiful young English doctor who, to escape the British prejudice against female doctors, travels to America and almost by accident becomes a battlefield doctor for Confederate troops led by the dashing "Gray Ghost of the Confederacy John Mosby; Uncle Coffin, an old blind man who communicates with animals who assist him as he helps runaway slaves head North and many more characters both historical an composites. Even though fictionalized "The Thirteenth Rainbow" is meticulously researched using primary sources and actual battlefield examinations and pulls absolutely no punches in its depiction of the horrors of slavery and the brutality of a war fought with 19th Century weapons but with the medical knowledge and techniques of the 14th. In the final chapters it tells of the First Battle of Saltville (Virginia) and the next day massacre of almost a hundred soldiers and their white officers by vengeful townspeople and Confederate renegade soldiers. For all its horrors, however, it ends on a very positive and hopeful note.