A literary look at life in a Midwestern city - an intriguing microcosm of the American story

Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Grand Rapids

Biographies & Memoirs

Van Til, Reinder

Olson, Gordon L.

Historical

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

While large armies engaged in epic battles in the eastern theater of the Civil War, a largely unchronicled story was unfolding along the Mississippi River. Thirty "Special Scouts" under the command of Lieutenant Isaac Newton Earl patrolled the river, gathering information about Confederate troop activity, arresting Rebel smugglers and guerillas, and opposing anti-Union insurrection. Gordon Olson gives this special unit full book-length treatment for the first time in The Notorious Isaac Earl and His Scouts. Olson uses new research in assembling his detailed yet very readable account of Earl, a dynamic leader who rose quickly through Union Army ranks to command this elite group. He himself was captured by the Confederates three times and escaped three times, and he developed a strategic -- and later romantic -- relationship with a Southern woman, Jane O'Neal, who became one of his spies. In keeping the river open for Union Army movement of men and supplies to New Orleans, Earl's Scouts played an important, heretofore unheralded, role in the Union's war effort.

The Notorious Isaac Earl and His Scouts: Union Soldiers, Prisoners, Spies

Eerdmans

Getting to know Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A Grand Rapids sampler

Grand Rapids Historical Commission

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Books by Olson, Gordon L.