In August 1861, a nineteen-year-old Illinois farm boy named Benjamin Webster ("Webb") Baker enlisted in the Union Army. For three years he fought in Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia--virtually the whole Western theater. Through it all he wrote compelling letters home describing his experiences. Generations later Benson Bobrick has used his ancestor's letters to write this stirring chronicle of one soldier's war. Not since the fictional "The Red Badge of Courage" have the trials of a soldier's Civil War been told with such beguiling force. Pea Ridge, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga--at these and other battles, Webb experienced the horror of war firsthand. By turns stoic, brave, and sorrowful, he writes of sleeping on the bare ground in winter, of harsh food rationing because of Confederate cavalry raids on baggage trains, of being wounded, and, most movingly, of death--including the death of his own brother, whom he buried on the field. Bobrick skillfully blends that voice with his own in a poignant tribute to his great-grandfather and a vivid narrative that will be cherished by anyone interested in the Civil War.