Excerpt from Chenneville by Paulette Jiles, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

John was suddenly alert. "There is bad news. What is it? I want you to tell me." He sat on the side of the bed with his head bent down while the doctor unwound his head bandages and then unrolled fresh ones. John touched the left side of his head and felt raised scars and bristly hair.

"Indeed, there is not." The doctor was firm. He rebandaged John's head. "Now, we gathered together what of your possessions survived the explosion. Your camp box and baggage suffered water damage as well as fire, but there's a few things inside. They made you a new camp box and put into it all the, well, remnants." He tucked in the ends of the new bandages. "Are you Creole? Do you speak French?"

"Not New Orleans Creole, St. Louis," John said and paused. "St. Louis was all French, once. I'm from one of those old families. Yes, I speak French."

"Do you recall that language?"

"I do," said John, and despite this confident statement he had to sort through his head as if it were stocked with shelves and he could not find the right one. "Read something of my uncle's letter. Anything."

"Yes, well, I copied something here, mmm, luckily I read French fairly well ..." The doctor took out a slip of paper and read, "Bien entendu ... mmm ... ne le derange pas nullment mon neveu ..." Then looked up at his patient with the glaring head wound, tall and broad in the shoulders and slightly unbalanced.

"Ah oue." It seemed to supply to John a sort of spring, tripping him over into French. "Nous sommes parents de mom pere."

"If you'll forgive me for saying so, you don't look French."

"You're forgiven."

Dr. Jameson nodded with a pleasant smile. He was thinking of the report he would make on this interesting skull fracture, this surprising recovery from a semi-coma. Complete recall of two languages, speech unimpaired, balance improving daily, no outbursts of temper, etc. He would include in this report his gratitude to head volunteer nurse Mrs. Stillwell for her organization of those with nursing skills and so on. Then he went on his rounds, leaving John with the conundrum that if there was bad news, he was not to hear it.

John got dressed again in a series of careful, thought-out movements, but he did better this time. The young male attendant hovered at his back, making little anxious helping gestures in the air.

"Leave me alone," John said. He took up his two canes and kept his spine straight and his head level. He went outside thinking this over, this business of not being dérangé, not being upset by bad news. He concentrated on walking from one side of the hospital grounds to the other. Great chestnut trees scattered their leaves upon his wounded head; colors of citron and lemon and amber.

His other injury had never bothered him. It was a clean small-caliber hole. And then the memory came back to him; they had fished the ball out with tongs. When he tried to place the incident he remembered absolute chaos; all their artillery and provisions wagons jammed up in a muddy road and lines of march falling apart, and a Rebel sharpshooter somewhere in the woods to the left. He had been knocked down by the bullet's impact. It was a place called Todd's Tavern. That must have been before the barge blew up.

And before the barge blew up, he had gone up in a balloon somewhere. This troubled him. He wanted it to be real. Also it made him apprehensive that he might be subject to imaginings or false memories.

He asked for his possessions, and they got them out of a great tent stacked full of abandoned gear. They brought him the whole lot: a newly made camp box, greatcoat, knapsack, rifle, revolver, pommel holster, and civilian clothes. On top of his box, he saw his tall riding boots. They had both been slashed wide open from top to instep. They must have done that when they brought him in. The boots were hard to get off, and they had many wounded and little time. He knew he must have gone to some trouble and expense to have them made, but he couldn't bring the circumstances to mind and briefly regretted the ruin of a good pair of riding boots. He threw them in the trash barrel outside.

Excerpted from Chenneville by Paulette Jiles. Copyright © 2023 by Paulette Jiles. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.