Having just finished reading your excellent novel, I would like to sing its praises...  I was particularly enthralled by your vivid character development (none of the characters were one-dimensional) and your most plausible and engaging "first hand accounts" of some of the most important events of the war, especially the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the Union camps around Vicksburg, and Sherman's March through Georgia (in which my great-great-grandfather, Pvt. Michael Schneider of Co. G, 27th Ohio Vol. Infantry, participated).  If the novel has not yet reached a large circulation, it certainly deserves the same.

J.A. Davis, Special Correspondent
Harper's Weekly

All Out of Heart is the account from a newspaperman's perspective of the events leading up to and including the American Civil War. To say simply that it is from a newspaperman's perspective is to gravely understate the matter. For this newspaperman, Nicholas Canfield also happens to hail from Maryland (a border and slave state), is originally from New York (with strong Union family) and has married into a Southern family (the Massines from South Carolina).
     Through this interesting mixture of origins and relationships the tale given in All Out of Heart hits at many of the issues and events of the war. It includes detailed accounts of life in Southern society before the war and how the issue of slavery and state's rights was dealt with. It includes interesting narrative concerning the actual events leading to secession (including the disbelief of many that the events would actually lead to war) as well as placing Canfield both at the Confederate's selection of Jefferson Davis as president and later the bombing of Fort Sumter. Canfield, while initially spending most of his time in the South (for his wife's sake) finds that his loyalties truly do lie with the Union and at Fort Sumter remains in the fort when the bombardment begins. This ostracizes him from his Southern family and sets him firmly in the book as a Yankee (and in some individual's minds, as a traitor).
     Following Fort Sumter Canfield becomes an army correspondent and is present at many of the battles of both the Eastern and Western theatres. At the beginning of the narrative we find him attending Eastern battles such as First Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg while later in the narrative (after the fall of Vicksburg) he shifts to the Western theater and accompanies Sherman's army through its many battles all the way to Georgia and then into the Carolina's. The book closes shortly after the end of the war and details somewhat the after-effects of the war but closes before the tale of Reconstruction opens.
     This review's synopsis could now be closed but still would be dreadfully short for within this general synopsis above many areas have been skipped over in order to maintain unity. The author of All Out of Heart however uses no such mainstreamed approach to her writing, and I do not mean this in a negative way. Rather I am attempting to point out the intricacies which she wove into the text - beautifully, I might add. She includes descriptions of slavery, families being torn apart, and the ache of the casualties in the war. She places Canfield in a hospital for a period in order that we might become acquainted with the wartime prisons and takes time to remind us that all was not well in the North when the Emancipation Proclamation was released (focusing on the riots that took place in New York City).
     Concluding this synopsis now this review must now move on to the issue of whether this book is worth reading or whether it is a dud, as so many books are. My conclusion, in one sentence: This is an excellent work giving a general overview of the war. It suffers from an extremity of profanity, though not unusual to Civil War fiction.
     To expand upon that, let me say first on the positive: The work is masterfully written. The intertwining of stories, of the personality of Canfield and the stresses of the war is excellently done. The author hits topics right and left which might easily have been left out but add greatly to the narrative. She reminds me of the narratives of Jeff Shaara, which I also thoroughly enjoy.
     ... Parents should be especially considerate in their decision whether to allow their children/teens to read this work or not.

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