BRUNSWICK — Matthew Langdon Cost of Brunswick has recently published a novel on Amazon entitled, “Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War: At Every Hazard.”

Although it is fiction, told through the eyes of a14-year-old aide, it is based in fact upon one of Brunswick’s greatest heroes — a college professor with no formal military training who, together with a small company of men, turned the tide of the battle and the war with a bayonet charge at Gettysburg.

This was not the end of his exploits, however, and by wars end, he was so respected that Ulysses S. Grant chose Chamberlain to accept the South’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The novel traces his evolution from an arrogant, overbearing professor to unwitting and unlikely hero and leader of men. Interwoven are subplots including the coming of age of his young, orphaned aide, a complicated marriage, and of course, lots of rousing battle scenes.

The story begins with a ferocious battle scene that orphans 14-year-old Emmett Collins. Following the last instructions of his father, Emmett shows up on Chamberlain’s doorstep in Brunswick, where he joins Chamberlain and the 20th Maine as they embark for war in the late summer of 1862. He grows from a boy into a man over the next three years as he accompanies Chamberlain on his rise through the ranks to major general and recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Matthew Langdon Cost lives in Brunswick. He has owned several businesses there, taught social studies at the Brunswick Junior High School for 10 years, and is now a dedicated writer. He can be reached at [email protected] or 751-5387. He also has a website, www.mattcost.net and a blog at www.blog.mattcost.net.