Review: Whirligig from Shire’s Union Trilogy by Richard Buxton

Shire leaves his home and his life in Victorian England for the sake of a childhood promise, a promise that pulls him into the bleeding heart of the American Civil War. Lost in the bloody battlefields of the West, he discovers a second home for his loyalty.

Clara believes she has escaped from a predictable future of obligation and privilege, but her new life in the Appalachian Hills of Tennessee is decaying around her. In the mansion of Comrie, long hidden secrets are being slowly exhumed by a war that creeps ever closer.

The Shire’s Union trilogy is at once an outsider’s odyssey through the battle for Tennessee, a touching story of impossible love, and a portrait of America at war with itself. Self-interest and conflict, betrayal and passion, all fuse into a fateful climax.

Written by award winning author Richard Buxton, the Shire’s Union trilogy begins with Whirligig, is continued in The Copper Road, and concludes with Tigers in Blue.

My Review

Here we have a story that starts in England and moves to America. Our female protagonist, Clara—from a noble family—falls in love with an American and moves to America to marry him, against her father’s will. Unfortunately, Tyler is a bit of a rogue and she’s unaware that he had already impregnated and secretly married a girl in her village. But her friend Shire finds out after she has left, and decides to follow her to Tennessee to break the bad news, marriage certificate in hand. Easier said than done! Shire is in over his head in no time, and decides the only way to get to the South is join the Union Army. Since he’s not a fighter, nor does he know how to use a gun, he doesn’t fare very well:

Shire fumbled for a cartridge and bit into the paper to empty the powder into his barrel. His hand shook so much that half of it fell to the dirt. He dropped in the ball, but the guns were firing around him: Tuck, Mason, Tom and Lyman with half a dozen others. The cascade unnerved Shire still more and he dropped his ramrod. When he finally brought his gun up, the Rebels were riding away down the road. His hammer clicked but the gun didn’t fire.

Clara’s father, the Duke of Ridgmont, had a lot of influence with Parliament, and if word got out about his daughter’s possibly bigamous marriage, things could go very wrong between England and the Confederacy. Hence, Shire needed to be stopped before his achieved his goal. What will Clara do when Shire shows up on her doorstep? How will he make it there with enemies chasing him down? We have a lot of fighting going on, after all, and he is stuck in his regiment. No one will miss him if he disappears. I had a little trouble keeping track of all the subplots in this novel, and there are times when I had to make a leap of understanding to keep up with the plot—for instance, one evening he refuses a drink and the next morning his cheek is frozen to the ship deck. What happened? But we certainly get a good feeling for the confusion and disorientation of the period.

Universal Buy Links for individual titles:

Whirligig: https://books2read.com/u/3GP7AO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/whirligig-richard-buxton/1130891070
The Copper Road: https://books2read.com/u/b5JRvR
Tigers in Blue: https://books2read.com/u/mVnXaA

Trilogy Amazon Buy Links:

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CDXDZDB
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08CDXDZDB

Meet Richard Buxton

Richard lives with his family in the South Downs, Sussex, England. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University in 2014. He has an abiding relationship with America, having studied at Syracuse University, New York State, in the late eighties. He travels extensively for research, especially in Tennessee, Georgia and Ohio, and is rarely happier than when setting off from a motel to spend the day wandering a battlefield or imagining the past close beside the churning wheel of a paddle steamer.

Richard’s short stories have won the Exeter Story Prize, the Bedford International Writing Competition and the Nivalis Short Story Award. His first novel, Whirligig (2017) was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award. It was followed by The Copper Road (2020) and the Shire’s Union trilogy was completed by Tigers in Blue (2023). To learn more about Richard’s writing visit www.richardbuxton.net.