Caught Between Three Fires: Cass County, Mo., Chaos & Order No. 11 1860 - 1865

This has been one of the most in death books I have read regarding the border war from Missouri's point of view. It talks not just the dates, battles, and order number 11… It delves into the people and how they were affected. Giving the reader an honest view of how these 16 years demolished Cass County. Although at times, the author repeats himself it is still a book well worth reading and should most definitely be in your research library

One of my great grandfather's left Greenbrier County, WV before the Civil War and settled in Cass County, MO. His name was Lewis McCoy. I was very much interested in this book as I had read some about Cass County in this period of history and wanted to learn more about it. I have just started reading it and I think it's going to be a great read that teaches me more about life in the days when folks were making land claims and then fighting to hold onto their lives and homes. Anyone who has relatives that settled the area will learn much from this book. A thick book with lots of good stories. Already, I am glad I bought it.

I thought a long time before leaving this review; I hate to leave a bad one. The history in this book is grea; interesting and compelling, especially as members of my husband's family are included. However, I'm wondering if it is self-published as the editing is so poor. There are frequent grammatical and punctuation errors which make it extremely frustrating to try to read.

It was exciting to find my family history in the Book. The stuff they had to go though brought tears to my eyes. This was material that was never discussed inside the family and was wonderful to discover. The author did an excellent job.

I enjoyed this book, mainly because of the well-researched details he includes. It is well written by a great story teller who makes the events come alive for the reader.

This is a very large book, rich with information. However, the information is repeated and becomes redundant at times. I gave it four stars because of the historical significance of the stories. The writing style and ability is lower in standard.

Caught Between Three Fires gives the reader a well written understanding of what people who resided in the border counties of Missouri during the Civii War 1860 -1865 lived through. I found the book very informative and I would recommend this book.

This book has a wealth of good information (too much, in fact), but is very poorly written. It reads as though the author just made notes as he did his research and then published the notes without any proofreading or editing. Much of the detailed information could better be presented in an appendix rather than in the text. The author often repeats himself by telling the same story more than once -- and sometimes he presents different "facts" the second time. I understand that his multiple sources may have told the story differently, but the author should have caught this and noted it. The book is far too long and boring. The information could have been presented much more succinctly. Even though the book is crammed with facts, I was disappointed that there is no mention of the Amarugia area in SW Cass County, even though this area was heavily involved in the Civil War. Also, even though the author mentions many officers, Union and Confederate, he did not mention my great-great-grandfather, who was a Union officer from Amarugia. I bought the book specifically to learn about the Amarugia area, and was very disappointed.