The Long Road Back — Alex A. Lesueur

The day the gates of the Union prison camp in southwestern Pennsylvania opened, former Confederate Major Chance Gatewood was a free man. He and the surviving prisoners had endured over two years of torture, starvation and beatings at the hands of the Union prison guards. Being a major gave him a few more privileges, but didn't keep him from receiving beatings from a particular Union sergeant-major. All that Chance wanted to do was to go back to his ranch on the upper Brazos River outside of Waco, Texas. He didn't have much to go home to, since his wife and daughter were killed by renegades and buried on the ranch by his neighbor while he was fighting in Virginia. He was tired of war and the killing, wanting to get his ranch back to normal and raise cattle. But along the way, he met Polly Spencer and her children in Tennessee and fell in love with her. She had to endure hardships while raising the children and trying to keep her farm from being taken by carpetbaggers. He was torn between his ranch in Texas and Polly in Tennessee, wanting both and really knew it would be one or the other. After five year-old Adam Spencer was killed by a dog, it helped him make up his mind and knew he needed Polly and the children. Jodie turned out to be the son he always wanted.