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Assistant dean pens new novel about trio of brothers who entertain Civil War camps

Assistant dean pens new novel about trio of brothers who entertain Civil War camps

The Campfire Boys By Philip Lee Williams Mercer University Press $26

The Campfire Boys
Philip Lee Williams
Mercer University Press
$26

Philip Lee Williams, assistant dean for public information in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has just published his 14th book, a new novel entitled The Campfire Boys.

Williams, winner of the 2004 Michael Shaara Prize for his novel A Distant Flame, tells a story that’s never really been told in fiction before-of Civil War camp entertainers.

Filled with high spirits and hilarity, it is also a book of extremely accurate history, telling the story of the Eastern Theater of the war and, in particular, a Georgia unit called Cobb’s Legion Infantry.

The novel is the story of the three Blackshear brothers-Jack, Michael and Henry-and how they turned a boyhood love of performing in their Georgia hometown of Branton into one of the most famous campfire acts of the Civil War.

Much more, though, it’s a book of war and its consequences and how we try to turn away from it with entertainment.

Williams, a 1972 graduate of UGA, has published 10 novels, three books of creative nonfiction and a volume of poetry. He will be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in March. (See story).

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