Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War

A graphic novel that tells the history of the Civil War through a series of vignettes highlighting the experiences of ordinary people. For context, Fetter-Vorm and Kelman provide a brief prose account of the war—the politics, battles, and troop movements that are part of the standard history—broken into short pieces that introduce each graphic tale. But the true heart of the book is its 15 short stories of life during wartime, which encompass a wide variety of average American citizens. Here, readers meet blacks and whites on both sides of the battle lines, widows, nurses, runaway slaves, and many more. Perhaps the most resonant of many moving stories is "Ink," which shows the lives of soldiers in a prisoner-of-war camp and ends on a darkly ironic beat. The artwork has a rushed, sketchy feel, which matches the urgency of the stories, and washed-out blues and browns that comprise the bulk of the color give the book a strong sense of the period.