Coal Black Horse — Robert Olmstead

When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable. She instructs her only child to retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home. Just fourteen and ill-prepared for the journey, Robey sets off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray on the other. However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's destiny-- a horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector.

As they plunge into a world of death and destruction, Robey is cloaked in the invincibility of youth. But the horrors of war, the truth of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy into the best a man can be--and the worst, irrevocably scarred by all that he has seen and done.

This "powerful, redemptive narrative" in the tradition of The Red Badge of Courage is a brutally honest portrait of what war does to men and how it allows--even compels--them to love what they should hate.