Sissy! Book One of the Jessica Radford Trilogy
This Is One Civil War Novel You Won't forget!
What Sissy! is about...
Tom Mach's award-winning novel Sissy! is a sensitive and troubling novel about compassion and forgiveness in an incredible era of hatred and violence. In Sissy! "Bleeding" Kansas comes alive and Jessica Radford experiences the horrible events that culminate in the infamous Quantrill raid--a 19th century terrorist attack that killed almost 200 innocent men and children in Lawrence , Kansas . This unusually well-researched Civil War novel shows how young Jessica, disguised as a male solider, braves death as she attempts to avenge the murder of her parents by border ruffians. Delusional and about to kill the wrong man on a Tennessee battlefield, she believes she sees an angel, who stops her from making a tragic mistake.
Sissy! opens in 1857 with an Underground Railroad rescue of a slave girl and ends with the 1863 Quantrill raid. The novel contains touching scenes, such as the death of a young ex-slave named Lazarus in the arms of a prostitute and Jessica's inner struggle over a tumultuous love affair. Sissy! includes lifelike battle scenes in Perryville, Hoover's Gap, Stones River, and Island Mound-the site where the first black slaves died in the Civil War while serving under the flag of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, started by James Lane. Mach's novel brings you into the hearts and minds of people who shaped Kansas history-and the history of this country.people like James Lane, Colonel Martin, General Rosecrans, .newspapermen like John Speer, who was not afraid to tell the ugly truth about slavery. unknown heroes who worked through the Underground Railroad.brave women who disguised themselves in order to fight alongside men .and men like William Quantrill who thought nothing of committing terrorism, killing innocent civilians in a defenseless town. After reading about the heartbreak and tenacity of the men and the courage and sacrifice of these remarkable women in that bygone era, the reader of Sissy! will experience a deeper appreciation of this emotionally-charged era in our nation's history.
About the Author - Tom Mach
Tom Mach is an accomplished writer from Kansas , having published articles in such national magazines as Women's Day, Writer's Digest , Jack & Jill , and many others and having also published a short story and several poems.
Mr. Mach, prior to his retirement as an international market research analyst for Frost & Sullivan and as an editor for a national computer software magazine, California lifestyle magazine, and a small business magazine, is a self-taught historian with a particular interest in the Civil War. Everything about that entire conflict fascinates him, and early Civil War novels, such as Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage and Gone With the Wind , made an impression on him at a young age, and it showed him how to look at that war from a deeply personal level.
Mach won the J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award for Sissy! (the first book of a trilogy) and was featured in the Lawrence Journal World , Topeka Capital Journal , and the Wichita Eagle and has also received praise from several reviewers and readers. He is a member of the Kansas Authors Club, the Kansas Writers, and the California Writers Club (CWC). In addition, he won several other awards for other writing ventures, including the Jack London Award from the CWC. He is on an area-wide speaking tour of Kansas for Sissy! but is trying to find time to complete the second book of his trilogy, tentatively entitled All Parts Together.