A unique and tense hero’s quest, Nathan Harris’ Amity is a tale of a time and place rarely explored in frontier fiction: Mexico after the Civil War, where some former Confederate soldiers ventured to seek their fortunes, taking their “freed” slaves with them.

The tale, which begins in 1866, is told from the dual perspectives of recently liberated brother and sister Coleman and June. They may no longer legally be property, but they remain without resources and options and are thus reliant on their former owners, the Harpers.

June, the elder, was taken to Mexico two years prior by Mr. Harper, who, suspecting his circumstances would diminish at the war’s end, set off in search of a silver mine. Coleman, meanwhile, remained behind in New Orleans with Mrs. Harper, her adult daughter, Florence, and the family dog, Oliver. When a brusque stranger appears with a letter from Mr. Harper demanding that the three join him in Mexico, Coleman eagerly takes up the journey:

“My heart still burnt like a flame at the prospect of who I might find at the other side of the sea. That if there were any chance I could reunite with my sister, the one person who could make me whole, there was not a single body of water I would not traverse to see her.”

The siblings could not be more different. Bookish and observant, Coleman adheres to “the rules” instilled in him during enslavement. This is not just a survival instinct but also a strong preference for structure and propriety. He observes all but rarely speaks his mind. June is more outgoing and practical, always seeking opportunities to build a future for her and her brother.

She is also physically stronger, able to care for herself and others in a way he cannot. Her ongoing abuse at the hands of Mr. Harper teaches her to be just as observant as her brother and to learn how to manipulate her few resources to survive until she can strike out on her own. For his part, Coleman survives a shipwreck, a kidnapping, and multiple changes in fortune that slowly transform him. They both experience a trial by fire through the Southwestern desert.

Harris sketches this landscape in language whose spareness both belies the place’s overwhelming beauty — “The sun loomed overhead like a penny spat clean” — and emphasizes its indifference to those attempting to survive in it. Characters are often overcome by the wildness, feeling small, lost, and desperate in the face of the stark, unforgiving land. The desert sprawls before them, hardening and remaking them as they attempt to endure it.

“She’d faced damnation,” the author writes of June, “had been unfurled into a world unknown and reconstituted by the desert’s power, its mysteries, its obstacles, into something whole.” Even petty, venal Mr. Harper, while slowly losing his sanity, learns that the land will not bow to his presumption of superiority.

The narrative’s twists and turns — which include an uprising, a runaway wagon, and a return from the dead — are extremely effective. Although the pacing slows at points, such moments don’t last long. Trepidation is never far as readers anxiously turn the pages to find out whether Coleman and June (neither of whom knows the other is nearby) will reunite.

Finally, the Civil War is not overlooked, and its horrors are not ignored. There is no scene in the novel free of its ghosts, no decision uninfluenced by its heaviness. As Coleman says of experiencing its trauma firsthand:

“It became our duty to listen, to watch, to endure; to witness.”

Amity interrogates the traditional American tropes of rugged individualism and the romanticized conquering of the land. It’s an engrossing read that offers rare insight into the post-Civil War period, making it a worthy addition to the Westerns and other historical fiction already on your shelf.

Patricia S. Gormley recently lives in Northern Virginia with her librarian husband and four small, mysterious beings who profess to be cats but who behave like permanently disgruntled toddlers with no verbal skills.