David Kerr Chivers

Ghosts of War: a Novel of the Civil War and Today David Kerr Chivers

Separated from his wife, adrift in New York City, Ollie Morton returns to Pittsfield, his hometown in the Berkshire Hills, for his mother's funeral and decides to stay. He joins the law firm of his father and brother Ben - a state senator with a thriving practice. But old sibling rivalries threaten to re-ignite as the two brothers get back together. More disturbing is the ghost Ollie encounters, a ghost from over a hundred years before, with Ollie's name, and whose past life mirrors Ollie's present. The story shifts to Pittsfield in 1861 where two brothers, Oliver and Ben Morton, are heading off to war, and dealing with their own growing rivalry, played out on the battlefields of the Civil War. As Ollie's own problems with Ben head to their climax, is he doomed to repeat the mistakes of his family's past? Do the bad acts of one brother ever justify the bad acts of another? Will the ghosts of his family's past lead Ollie to safety, or push him into a fight that echoes down the generations?