Shelby Foote is best known for his monumental three-volume history of the American Civil War, already a classic of its kind. His role as a novelist is less known, though he has written four other novels as well as this one - all of them, predictably, on the same war. Shiloh (1862) was a bloody battle in which U.S. Grant was taken initially by surprise by the Southerners under Albert Sidney Johnston, and almost routed. He recovered his balance, Johnston was killed, and reinforcements enabled Grant to push back the Confederates and have rather the better of what was, overall, probably a drawn battle.
Foote employs the familiar technique of seeing the fighting through the eyes of a number of men on both sides, adding up to a kind of multi-angled whole. The result is well worth reading, though nowhere in the same league as Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.