Freeze Time Media released “The Darkest Night: A Novel on Reconstruction in the South” on May 5, 2015.
Author Joe Poindexter follows three disappointed Confederate soldiers as they leave for home in Arkansas after the last Civil War battle in North Carolina. As the three friends travel the poor country roads back west, they are exposed to the ravaged South and most of the major problems of the early Reconstruction period. The men observe the ruined Southland, the burned homes, farms, and plantations. They encounter homeless whites and numerous bands of wandering, freed Afro–Americans, all poor and hungry. Cruel Union soldiers and lawless Rebel soldiers, including deserters, only make things worse. And very quickly, the travelers realize that a new force has developed in their beloved Southland. The Ku Klux Klan has begun to fill the lawless void in the South. The question: is the Klan an ally or an enemy? Earl Forrest, with his wife, Emily, and a small daughter in Helena, Arkansas, worries constantly about his small family and their welfare. Al Emerson meets a beautiful, young woman who was raped during the war. She has a black child. But in love, he swears to return to Georgia in the immediate future and marry his new love, Rachel. The third soldier, Murlan Skidoff, known to his friends as “Squirrel,” worries about his older mother, father, and older sister, Mavis, and whether they survived the war. And finally, a black Rebel, Jim Washington, befriended by the white Rebs, will join up with the men and become a dear friend as they move back to their homes in Arkansas. Jim wonders how his mammy, a slave cook on an Arkansas plantation, is surviving after being freed. The four men will definitely come to realize that the Reconstruction era is one of the darkest periods in the history of the Southern United States.
This book is available through Amazon as a paperback and an ebook.
This is Joe’s third book. He is also the author of “Blue: A Novel on the Civil War,” and “A Divided State: A Civil War Novel.”
Visit Joe’s Author Page to learn more about him.
Freeze Time Media recently released “A Divided State: A Civil War Novel.” Gravelly, Arkansas, was not too different from most small, towns in rural Arkansas. For the most part, there was not a great disparity in terms of wealth between the mostly lower middle class and a sizable lower class. Though poor, and largely uneducated, the hardworking Yell County residents were able to scratch out a living in the rocky soil of the Fourche River Valley. Cotton, the cash crop of the South, allowed most families to live reasonably happy, rewarding lives.