CIVIL BLOOD

Nothing could seem more cryptic than the answer Major Josiah Harrald makes to wartime nurse Narcissa Powers’s question about his Confederate officer’s coat: “Stolen. Cats. Came in the window.” Properly interpreted, however, Harrald’s dying speech is terrifying. His coat, its pocket fat with bills, has been taken by some boys belonging to one of Richmond’s rival neighborhood youth gangs—the Butcher Cats or the Shockoe Hill Cats—too young, too ignorant, or too desperate to care that the garment and the money are infected with the smallpox that killed Harrald. What’s become of the Cats who vanished into the city’s depths, or the mysterious woman who visited Harrald shortly before his death? The frantic attempts of Narcissa and conjure woman Judah Daniel to protect the town from a danger far more deadly than all the Union guns are thwarted by a killer who seems to be stalking everyone who’s seen the fatal coat; by would-be hospital patron Roland Ragsdale, a wealthy speculator whose interest in gambling and women clearly indicates that he’s up to no good; by the byways of the contagion, which lead Narcissa to matters and people no gentlewoman should ever know; and by McMillan’s apparent determination to find roles for all the continuing characters of her Civil War saga (Angel Trumpet, 1999, etc.) in this third installment.

Despite the strain of juggling a large cast, many with little to do but cower fearfully, McMillan manages another powerful portrait of women fighting the hardest battles of all.