Two teenage girls, sisters a year apart, are in a terrible auto accident near where they live, a few miles from the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh. Penny, the older sister, is killed outright, while Sandy, the younger, is badly injured and not expected to live.
In a coma, Sandy meets people who are oddly dressed and who speak English, but not the English she speaks. Eventually she comes out of the coma but continues to see and talk with these people—doctors, nurses, soldiers—on their way to a great battle at Shiloh.
As fascinating as these occurrences are, they are associated with Sandy’s refusal to accept Penny’s death. Only by witnessing the deaths of her Civil War friends is Sandy able to come to terms with the death of her sister and recover her own life.
The Shiloh Renewal is a fine novel that offers a compassionate and even hopeful look at death, loss, and grief.
Joan Leslie Woodruff is of mixed American Indian ancestry and lives in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico amidst the ancient Anasazi ruins, where she owns and operates a cattle ranch. Having earned several advanced academic degrees in health care and education, Ms. Woodruff worked for fifteen years in several major hospitals in California before returning to her native New Mexico to write fiction. Her first novel, Neighbors, explored the spiritual life she discovered living beside the ruins of the prehistoric American cliff dwellers.
Rebecca Rogers has been a professional actor and performer for twenty years, specializing in improvisation with ComedySportz and period acting with several renaissance festivals across the country. She is director of the Northwest Renaissance Festival and founder of the Society for Renaissance Performers in Spokane, Washington.