David Ballentine

Cavalryman, Book 3 David Ballentine

This is the third book in my Cavalryman Series. Book 1 traces the immigration of my protagonist, Owen Boyle, from Ireland in 1850, his development as a horseman, and an innocent teen romance. But in the foreground, the nation advances toward civil war and Owen joins the Union cavalry in Book 2. He fight through Gettysburg in that novel. This book sees Owen advance to increased responsibility as he continues to fight Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah, at the Wilderness, and around Richmond and Petersburg until the war's end at Appomattox Courthouse. Owen continues to ride his stout gelding, Jake, and he becomes more than friends with a southern woman at Winchester, Virginia, though he remains haunted by the girl he knew earlier in New Jersey. This novel ends with the war, but Books 4 and 5 follow Owen onto the western plains with Custer and the newly created 7th US Cavalry.