A Texas yarn about 7 teenagers who leave hill country to fight for the Confederate Army in the Battle of Shiloh. Tough and country-wise after growing up rassling horses and fightin’ Comanches the boys bumble their way east across Texas and into Louisiana where they encounter the true south for the first time. It takes weeks and nearly half a book of adventures and growing up before the boys reach the front lines. Near the book’s end some story lines get dropped and a few time sequences become jumbled in order to bring the horrible serendipity of warfare to life, but these oversights are forgivable. The characters are real and the dialogue perfect. All the more remarkable that the book still reads well considering it was penned more than fifty years ago.