Genre: Historical fiction
Description:
The novel’s subtitle is “A Novel of
the Civil War and the Most Famous Female Militia in American History”. That
sums it up very well. It has the same kind of historical sweep as War and
Peace but is, mercifully, half the length.
Author:
Glen Craney has been a lawyer, a journalist,
and a screenwriter before turning his hand to fiction. He claims to have given
up the law. His fictional preference is historical (sometimes with a
history-and-mystery element) and he ranges widely through the centuries focusing
on particular episodes, as here: the book runs from 1856 to a day or so after Grant
surrendered to Lee at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Craney has also written novels
set during the Great Depression, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229, the
reign of Robert the Bruce in Scotland (14th century), World War I, and
the Age of Discovery in Portugal in the 15th century. He lives in
Malibu, lucky man. His website is at www.glencraney.com
Appraisal:
This is a very interesting book.
Craney is obviously fond of research. I cannot think but that a LOT of
background work went into this book, yet the author wears that learning very lightly.
One tiny detail will, perhaps, serve to illustrate the whole: in a couple of
places Craney refers to a ‘campaign hat’ – this is obviously not a Stetson, but
a hat specifically worn by military men, usually in the cavalry. The point is
not laboured, but I appreciated the nuanced information and acknowledged it as
I went by. There is a lot of this kind of thing, reflected also in Craney’s
vocabulary (which is of the period and not glossed, but completely
comprehensible). Not only does this reassure the reader that the author knows
what he is about, but the colour it brings to the book makes it jump off the
page. I salute him for it. I defy you not to learn from this book. Yet it is emphatically
not a history book: it is great entertainment.
All the hardships, battles and sieges are
here, all the personalities, on both sides. The main characters are real people.
Heaven knows how Craney found them. He has done a great job of imagining the
undocumented parts of their lives. (And if you are interested in what happened
to them next, there is an Afterword containing what he was able to find out
about that.) Craney has stitched together a cohesive work of fiction from the
primary and secondary sources he has mined, and made a book which gallops along
like charging cavalry.
Not only is this book informative about the
Civil War, it has much to say about the human heart, then and now. Craney
observes the widening chasm between Abolitionists and Secessionists, the way
each side begins to demonise the other, how this quickly hardens, carries
forward into the war and, of course, lives on after it. It reminded me very
much of Trump and his fake news. As it was published in 2021 this may have been
intentional. It demonstrates how the human ability to create and transmit
rumour has been a powerful force for mischief long before our age of soshul
meeja.
The book examines events in the North and in
the South through a primary protagonist on each side: Hugh La Grange in the
North and Nancy Brown Morgan in the South. The insults, misunderstandings, and
umbrages taken multiply until you can clearly hear the artillery firing. Craney
is at pains not to sugarcoat the misery and anguish of war, and there are parts
of it you will not want to read on a full stomach.
As well as being a really great adventure
story, the book has much to say about why we should never go to war. All the
more poignant now that Putin has invaded Ukraine. In the American Civil War
brothers and cousins fought on opposite sides. We’ve had two wars like that in
Britain. Now there is one in Ukraine where soi-disant ‘brothers’ are being
fired upon. When will it stop?
I should just add that in the early part of
the book I found it difficult to warm to the characters. Both Northern and
Southern characters kept sneering, sniggering, scowling, snarling (not the
women), smirking, taunting, snarking, and snickering at each other and putting
each other down. They all drank in secret (including the women), many of them
to serious excess. As the hardships of the war increase this unloveable
behaviour reduces. I think now this may have been a deliberate ploy, to allow
the characters to grow as the war touches them more nearly.
One final point: I read a soft copy of this
book. There are quite a lot of illustrations of the characters and places in it
– an enriching experience in themselves. Kindle still doesn’t handle this sort
of thing well, so I urge you to fettle a paperback copy if you can, when the quality
of the book will be best enjoyed.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
There are a few typos and errors of continuity. They are but momentary
lapses, ride by them.
Rating: ****
Four Stares.
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 155-160,000 words
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