Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg

This work provides an entertaining look into what may have transpired during the Battle of Gettysburg. True, the outcome may have been different, but one can never really know. I'm often asked, "...what would Jackson have done at Gettysburg if he were alive.", and my response usually is, - "Stink, since he'd been dead for a while". Now there is at least one new senerio for the armchair historian to ponder.Quite interesting and a fun read.

Generously immersed in historical fact, I found myself forgetting at times where fact ends and the "what if" takes over. Gibboney works this concept superbly and his excellent knowledge of civil war history rewards him well as he deftly paves a side road to historical reality. I anxiously await more literary magic from this gifted writer.

Although this books is classed as "juvenile fiction" and is perhaps not as complex as a novel for adults, Gibboney has come up with an original idea in the treatment of Gettysburg that makes the book worth reading by any alternate history fan. I.e., that the battle might have been fought elsewhere. Now admittedly there have been few other novel-length treatments of an alternate Gettysburg (Tsouras's detailed book is the only one that springs to mind), but Gibboney is apaprently the first to describe how a bad first day at Gettysburg could have led the Union to retreat, and the climatic battle is fought somewhere down the road. Thus, in Gibboney's world, we would today be still talking about the Battle of Taneytown.

Well illus., great CDV of Robert E. Lee signed on the image