Who Comes with Cannons?

Beatty's posthumous Civil War novel will be welcomed by readers of her earlier works, such as Charley Skedaddle and Jayhawker . Truth Hopkins, a Quaker, is sent to North Carolina relatives on the eve of the Civil War; her mother is dead and her father dying. Doubly an outsider, she watches and helps in small ways as her kin run a station on the Underground Railroad. When war comes her two male cousins are forced into the Confederate army; later--in a rather improbable journey north and back again--Truth rescues one of them from a Union prison in Elmira, N.Y. The once-timid Truth can then take her place in the family and in the local Meeting for Worship. The risky choice to create a heroine who plays a passive role for much of the story succeeds in the end--Truth's quiet determination allows readers to view the Civil War from the perspective of a group persecuted by both sides. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)