Vengeance In My Heart: A Novel of the Civil War [Illustrated] [Paperback]

David K. Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2002

In 1863, Confederate guerrillas raided Lawrence, Kansas, unleashing in turn a torrent of revenge on western Missouri by Kansans and Federal soldiers. The author tracked down dozens of eyewitness accounts of the raid and aftermath, from diaries, memoirs, interviews, newspapers, and articles. This is the first true and complete account of the Lawrence Raid, using only reported dialogue, written in a novelized form. All characters and events in this book are real. A prologue and epilogue are also provided for historical context.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David K. Moore was born in Fresno, California, in 1952. After serving in Vietnam as a paratrooper, he completed a BA in archaeology and German language and literature, studying in Heidelberg and Berlin. David then worked a number of years as an archaeologist in Guatemala and Israel. After leaving archaeology he later earned a master's in Applied U.S. History. David has been working at the Library of Congress for the past fifteen years as a German specialist. He has published over twenty articles on a variety of topics, as well as appearing on CBS Evening News and a variety of cable and public channels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse; illustrated edition edition (December 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403315213
• ISBN-13: 978-1403315212
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,749,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Positively Wonderful!, November 19, 2003

By 

Elisabeth "Gymfan15" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vengeance In My Heart: A Novel of the Civil War (Paperback)

This book is amazing. The author evidently went through a lot of research to write this book, and his work really paid off. Unlike Jeff Sharra's books, this one had a lot more conversation, which I think is a lot better.
I just thought this book was just amazing. I mean, I could not believe the accuracy, all the information, everything.
It's about a confederate guerrilla raid on the town of Lawrence, by a bloodthirsty man named William Clark Quantrill who said that every man in the town must be killed, because of their 'Union' sympathys. Some did manage to escape, and the town's women bravely risked their lives to save complete strangers. The whole thing just came alive to me through the author's exciting and well-written narrative.
This is a must-read book for anyone who is interested in the Civil War, and anything that is connected to it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My review of a great book, October 23, 2003

By 

Ole-Egil Reinfjord (Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vengeance In My Heart: A Novel of the Civil War (Paperback)

Vengeance in my heart is a book about Quantrill`s raid into Lawrence, one of the most daring and brutal feats of Quantrill and his raiders. The book gives you an insight in human nature, both good and bad, on both sides of the war. It is written in such a way that you can smell the gunsmoke, and hear the rebel yells.
It does not portray one side as totally good and the other as totally bad, but it gives you the realistic and neutral story of preparations, the raid and the aftermath. As a Cowboy action shooter (cas), member of Single Action Shooting Society (sass), Scandinavian Western Shooters (sws), and one of the founders of the cas club Quantrill Raiders in Norway, I feel this book is a must for everyone with an interest in the civil war, and the Missouri-Kansas border war in particular.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author review, August 3, 2003

By 

S. Annand (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vengeance In My Heart: A Novel of the Civil War (Paperback)

FROM THE COVER: "In 1863, Confederate guerrillas raided Lawrence, Kansas, unleashing in turn a torrent of revenge on western Missouri by Kansas and Federal soldiers. The author tracked down dozens of eyewitness accounts of the raid and aftermath, from diaries, memoirs, interviews, newspapers, and articles. This is the first true and complete account of the Lawrence Raid, using on reported dialogue, written in a novelized form. All characters and events in this book are real. A prologue and epilogue are also provided for historical context."
When Michael Shaara wrote "Killer Angels," concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, he supposedly used only dialogue reported by eyewitnesses. I used this as the basis for "Vengeance In My Heart," a story about the Lawrence Raid. Since the raid is rather obscure compared to Gettysburg, I produced a hybrid, the Prologue and Epilogue providing historical background that might be unknown to the reader. The novelized portion uses only reported dialogue, culled from the written records, as well as period photographs for descriptions.
Obtaining the reports on this raid was a lengthy process. The most complete version of the raid comes from Connelley's "Quantrill and the Border Wars." What I learned studying for my master's in US History was never to trust a footnote. Unfortunately, a number of Connelley's footnotes on sources were wrong. To compound this confusion, all subsequent books on the raid, such as Goodrich's "Bloody Dawn," used the same false footnotes for the same incidents in the raid. It is evident these subsequent authors regurgitated Connelley's version of events. In order to provide the most complete version of events, I tracked down numerous eyewitness reports never before cited. Using the opening attack on the Eldridge House as one example, I spent months assembling all the disparate writings like a jigsaw pussle to produce the most complete chronological description of that event.
Another device I used in writing this book was to eschew using the standard literary device of telling a story through one individual. With the possible exception of Larkin Skaggs (who was killed near the end), no Confederate guerrilla was everywhere, just as no citizen of Lawrence saw every incident and killing. What the reader should come away with while reading the book is a sense of the chaos of the raid. A citizen would be spared by one group of guerrillas only to be shot down by the next group.