REVIEW: CIGARS IN THE PARLOR

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In this erotic tale of lust, love, and sacrifice, two men find solace in each other’s arms as they are caught between the splintered world of the Union and the Confederacy. When Kit Walker’s leg is shattered at the Battle of Manassas, he finds himself on Doctor Wallace Sanger’s operating table. Wallace saves his life – but removes his leg. As his wounds mend, the two men find more than comfort as they explore each other’s hidden desires.      

REVIEW by Christopher Hawthorne Moss

A Civil War era military surgeon and one of his patients, an amputee, in this quintessence of why history should be taught accompanied by historical fiction. You all know I am a devotee of good historical fiction, but seldom have I found a better example of how novels can make an event in history relate to a reader. Besides the two main characters and how they managed to live during a period when the town of Winchester, Virginia, went from Confederate to Union occupation and back again, each army leaving it more of a wreck, bringing home the effect of history on the lives of residents and soldiers alike.   Add the details of life for the two men in a Union prisoner-of-war prison, and you go from early in the war to the last without any relief. From the loss of a house for a widowed woman to the disappearing medical supplies to the danger of being killed or forced into the army of the opposite side to having to scrimp and search for food and finally to face filthy water and no medical care in prison, the characters in this novel are put through just about every indignity possible.

The story starts out setting the situation of two men who find their way into bed together adding the possibly unlikely participation of others, but ultimately the trusts offer the author a chance to bring in Two Spirit men and others that serve to fill out the experiences of people who lived through the same tearing up of society. The author told me he grew up in Virginia and always wanted to explode its battlefields, and all I can say is that he did himself proud putting together this story that says more about what happened than any book about battles or soldiers in the Civil War section of history.