Gylanders, S.C.

PERSONAL:

Married.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

The Better Angels of Our Nature, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

London native S.C. Gylanders spent seven years researching and writing her first novel, a fact-based fictional account of life on the battlefield during the American Civil War titled The Better Angels of Our Nature. At the novel's outset, a young male orphan named Jesse is found hiding near a camp and soon becomes enmeshed in the soldiers' lives. The story takes a turn when the youth turns out to be a fifteen-year-old girl. Gylanders's scene setting and characterizations help create a vivid picture of military life during the Civil War years. The book was described as "absorbing and thoroughly convincing" by a Kirkus Reviews contributor, who further wrote: "An enigmatic parable is grafted onto an impressively detailed retelling of the ordeals endured by William Tecumseh Sherman's Army of the Tennessee." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked: "Gylanders knows the era thoroughly … and writes convincingly about the horrors of the battlefield and the field hospital." Military.com writer Tom Miller described The Better Angels of Our Nature as an "unexpected, magical novel," going on to comment: "War is indeed hell, but readers will find in Jesse an utterly charming apparition."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2006, review of The Better Angels of Our Nature, p. 804.

Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006, review of The Better Angels of Our Nature, p. 131.

ONLINE

Military.com,http://www.military.com/ (November 21, 2006), Tom Miller, review of The Better Angels of Our Nature.