About this book:

*The Conscript’s Song* follows the transformation of Eli Harper, a seventeen-year-old farm boy from Willow Creek, Pennsylvania, who is drafted into the Union Army during the American Civil War. A gifted fife player, Eli enters the regimented world of Camp Stanton, where he navigates the brutal transition from civilian life to military service. To preserve his humanity and foster camaraderie, Eli forms a "tin cup choir" and develops a sophisticated system of musical codes, using his fife and ballads to communicate secret warnings, morale-boosting messages, and shared griefs that the official military hierarchy ignores.

As the regiment moves from the instruction camps to the volatile Virginia front, Eli and his companions—including the pragmatic Jonas and the stoic blacksmith Miller—experience the grim realities of the conflict. The narrative details the sensory and psychological toll of the war, from the tension of the picket line and the claustrophobia of trench warfare to the tragic loss of friends in field hospitals. Throughout these trials, Eli’s music evolves from simple folk tunes into a complex "conscript’s song" that records the unvarnished truth of the soldiers’ lives, capturing moments of illegal foraging, drumhead justice, and brief, poignant truces with Confederate counterparts.

The novel concludes with the war’s end and Eli’s difficult return to his struggling family farm. Back in Willow Creek, he grapples with the "soldier’s squint" and the disconnect between his traumatic experiences and the quiet civilian world. Finding that he cannot simply return to the boy he once was, Eli uses his music to bridge his two lives, composing a final sonata in a quiet room that harmonizes his memories of the battlefield with the rhythms of the harvest. Ultimately, the book is a meditation on the power of art to facilitate survival, naming the costs of war while seeking a hard-won resolution in the peace that follows.