ELKHORN TAVERN by Jones, Douglas C

New York, 1980, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, FINE/FINE CONDITION, ( price clipped), 311 pages, 1 map........................................................................ The drama of the Civil War has long been a mainstay of American fiction, but never more affectingly, or with greater fidelity to the wages of human survival, than in this vibrant new novel by Douglas C. Jones.The family of Martin Hasford, himself away fighting with the Confederate army, consists of his wife Ora, their fifteen-year-old son Roman, and seventeen-year-old daughter Calpurnia. Their story represents a heroic and little-known saga of American grit.Hill-country farmers of western Arkansas, the Hasfords must contend with hardships far beyond questions of political interest or sectional allegiance in an area still frontier-wild. Prey to civilian marauders from both sides, Ora Hasford holds her home together—farming the land with her children's help, protecting their produce and livestock from appropriation by one army or the other, guarding her children from urgings to grow up too quickly in a dangerous time. The central event of the novel is a true and pivotal engagement of the war—what became known as the Battle of Pea Ridge. We experience the drama and hell of that remarkable battle largely through their eyes, particularly Roman's, but also through those of the troops on both sides around the settlement of Elkhorn Tavern, below the steep ridges of the Ozarks. Actual historical personages involved in the campaign—among them Wild Bill Hickok and (then Captain) Philip Sheridan—move through the action