Bull Run: The Road to Manassas (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780645713213)

In the spring of 1861, two seventeen year olds - one fleeing bondage, the other fleeing home - cross paths on the road to New York and forge an unlikely bond.

Abe, a runaway slave, and Murph, a boy escaping a brutal father, enlist in the 69^th New York, the Irish militia regiment marching to war. Under the guidance of Finn, a former British soldier and veteran of the Crimean War, they learn the discipline and hardship of soldiering.

But nothing prepares them for Bull Run.

On the fields around the stream at Manassas they face the chaos of the first great battle of the Civil War - confusion, terror, and the sudden collapse of every illusion they carried with them. In the smoke and panic of the retreat, they witness the moment when both North and South realise the war will not be settled by a single clash, but by a long, costly struggle neither side had imagined.