Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The prolific Boggs chronicles one of the more painful episodes of the Civil War: the border violence between Southern-sympathizing Missouri bushwhackers and Union-sympathizing Kansas jayhawkers. Staggering home from the Battle of Wilson's Creek, two teenagers, Alistair Durant and Beans Kimbrough, become inseparable friends. Left to their own devices, they might go back to farming in Clay County (near Kansas City), but redlegs (irregular Missouri Unionists) terrorize their families, and pretty soon the boys find themselves riding with Frank James, Cole Younger, Bloody Bill Anderson, and William Quantrill. Boggs takes pains to show the atrocities committed on the Missourians, including the imprisoning, abuse, and death of Southern-sympathizing women at a Kansas City prison. Nonetheless, Quantrill is a mad man, proclaiming the only rule of war . . . is to kill your enemy, kill his friends, kill his cattle, kill his pigs, kill his dignity, and the boys, particularly Alistair, begin to have their doubts. Planning his infamous raid, Quantrill sends them to spy on Lawrence, where they discover that abolitionists are human. Beans, a determined racist, is amazed by freedmen who look him in the eye as an equal and perform white men's jobs. Alistair finds himself falling in love with Maura Shea, daughter of a jayhawker commander on Quantrill's hit list. Deeply conflicted, Alistair joins the brutal raid with surprising results. Boggs turns in a fine effort here, with a subtle appreciation of race relations, the uncertainty of youth, and the nuances of seemingly familiar stories.--Mort, John Copyright 2010 Booklist