Book Received for Review - "A Surgeon in the Army of the Potomac"

I recently received a review copy of A Surgeon in the Army of the Potomac (by Francis M. Wafer; edited by Cheryl A. Wells; McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008).

Dr. Cheryl A. Wells is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Wyoming. Her special interests are in the American Civil War, Old South, and African American history.

Dr. Wells has kindly agreed to an author interview as well, so you can look forward to a "Medical Department" column about this book in a forthcoming issue of The Civil War News.

From the publisher:

"Lured across the border by promises of opportunity and adventure, Francis M. Wafer - a young student from Queen's Medical College in Kingston - joined the Union's army of the Potomac as an assistant surgeon. From the battle of the Wilderness to the closing campaigns, Wafer was both participant and chronicler of the American Civil War.

Cheryl Wells provides an edited and fully annotated collection of Wafer's diary entries during the war, his letters home, and the memoirs he wrote after returning to Canada. Wafer's writings are a fascinating and deeply personal account of the actions, duties, feelings, and perceptions of a noncombatant who experienced the thick of battle and its grave consequences.

The only substantial account by a Canadian Civil War soldier who returned to Canada, A Surgeon in the Army of the Potomac fills a critical gap in American Civil War historiography and will have broad appeal among scholars and enthusiasts."