Seventeen and terrified, Silas Swann has led a privileged life and has never been forced to fight for anything. He doesn't recognize himself as he stands in a Confederate uniform and holds a loaded weapon, crouching in the overgrown field. He's waiting to fire his weapon at his target in hopes of a kill. But why? Silas can't quite pull the trigger, and he begins to realize it has more to do with what the war stands for than his fear of killing a person. He learns that his enemies are much bigger than a Union soldier. They are personal struggles and the biggest bully in his own company, Moses. As Silas struggles through the marsh in the South, he finds himself in search of forgiveness. Will he find the answer to the war On Jordan's Stormy Banks?

Trying to describe the religious folk music of the Southern mountains is a little like trying to organize the church itself — songs, like people, just will not line up quietly in neat rows. Still, there are patterns in this varied and vital tradition, and searching for them reveals, as well as anything can, the intensity of religious feeling that has always been part of mountain life. Religious singing in the mountains flourished with the wave of revivals that has swept the region in the last two hundred years. The emotional intensity of these movements combined with the strong musical traditions of the area to produce some of America's most powerful music. It is true folk music — home-made music that people use in their everyday lives to express their deepest feelings.

This book is about vision. More precisely, it is about helping a congregation capture a pastor's vision and struggling through the process of seeing that vision fulfilled. H. Beecher Hicks captures that experience through the image of the Old Testament tabernacle---God's spiritual instrument for leading Moses and the Israelites through their wilderness journey and manifesting his glorious presence among them. This book arises out of Dr. Hicks's experiences in recent years of coping with the need of his church for a larger facility in the face of opposition from the community surrounding the church. The book captures and expounds the spiritual qualities required for such changing times. It both teaches and inspires. It shows us how to deal with the ups and downs of defining a vision, confronting change, and dealing with the obstacles that stand in the way, from both inside and outside the church. 'The problem with visions,' Dr. Hicks writes, 'is that they don't come with 'how to' manuals or an 800 number to call for technical support.' Yet God shows his faithfulness in many ways, sometimes after grit and grimy work, sometimes through unexplainable miracles.

First-person narratives of 28 former Gerogia slaves edited from WPA slave narratives.