“He don’t tell no lies,” Ben said, scraping shavings more urgently from the cedar. “He got a mean mouth, and don’t we all know it. Hot temper and a hard hand. I know it better’n most.” Ben touched the scar that flashed out of his temple. “But I ain’t never known him to lie to nobody, and neither have you.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (NOV 26, 2010)

This is a slave talking about his master, Nathan Bedford Forrest, a real character who became one of the most respected Confederate generals in the Civil War. At one point, Bedford breaks a pot over Ben’s head in rage at his insubordination, only to realize that there is a better way to gain his cooperation. So at considerable expense of time and treasure, he seeks out Ben’s wife, who had been sold away from him, and buys her back to be his companion. A former slave-trader who nonetheless treats his people with respect, this is only one of the contradictions that make Forrest so fascinating. Of minimal education himself, he nonetheless manages to win the heart of Mary Ann Montgomery, the genteel product of a finishing school, who tempers his roughness with grace, understanding, and a firm touch. Although still obviously in love with his wife, Bedford finds a different kind of passion with a slave woman, Catharine, with whom he will have several children. Two of his sons, one legitimate and the other not, will fight with him in the war, and the rivalry between them and their mixed pride and envy of their father forms one of the lesser strands in this absorbing and exciting book.

I should say that I am no Civil War buff, and have read very few other books about the conflict. This one is simply terrific, not because it casts light on events that I already know, but because it leads me into a world I hardly knew at all. I can think of only one other novel that comes so close to making me feel the detail and texture of the war, Michael Shaara’s magnificent The Killer Angels, his novelization of Gettysburg. But while Shaara takes the panoptic view, giving equal time to generals and soldiers on both sides, Bell filters everything through the eyes of Forrest and those closest to him. While Shaara focuses on a single set-piece battle, Bell deals as much with skirmishes, raids, and surprise attacks, a kind of fighting in woods and mountains that seems closer to guerilla tactics than the maneuvers of large armies. And while Shaara covers the action of only a few days, Bell ranges freely over a period of two decades, from 1845 to 1865.

Perhaps Bell’s most significant decision was not to tell the book chronologically. His forty shortish chapters jump around between the prewar period, the war itself, and the immediate aftermath. This may make it difficult to trace the course of Forrest’s career, but the outlines soon become clear, and Bell compensates with a meticulous chronological appendix. Each chapter centers around a specific anecdote, giving the book a series of immediate paybacks on the way to a powerful cumulative effect. I’m not sure I always understood the reason for the ordering of specific chapters, but the result is to give the book a psychological rather than historical unity. The connecting thread is the surprising mind of Nathan Bedford Forrest himself, with all his built-in contradictions. Bell also introduces — indeed opens with — a kind of chorus character, a free black from Haiti by way of New Orleans, whose name, Henri, is transformed into “Ornery” by the soldiers. Henri has the gift of second sight, able to foresee people’s deaths, and in some of the more visionary scenes he is actually dead himself. Oddly enough, this fantastic aspect enhances the immediacy of the rest. It threads through the book like the “Devil’s Dream” of the title, a fiddle tune that starts slow and works up faster and faster. Time revolves, dissolves, as in Bell’s epigraph from Albert Einstein: “The separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”

The Devil, of course, is Forrest, which was how Sherman described him to Lincoln; his Dream has evaporated by the war’s end, although nothing dims the man’s fighting spirit. Bell’s other epigraph is by George Garrett: “Soldiers do not fight any better because of a good cause or a bad one.” There are plenty of episodes which can account for Forrest’s reviled reputation, not least a massacre of black and white soldiers at Fort Pillow, but Bell presents his protagonist with sympathy and understanding, and he wisely stops short of Forrest’s postwar role in founding the KKK, until he came to denounce it as a terrorist organization. What he gives us is a flawed but honest individual of irresistible personal magnetism, a rough-tongued leader who is impossible not to follow:

“Git round the left,” he shouted at the remnants of the Seventh. “Take the damnjobberknowlyankees in the rear there. Git on with ye — if ye’re feart to be shot ye best go forward for I’m well and goddam ready to shoot ye in the back if ye don’t.” Henri stared as the dapple gray reared up in the middle of the open field, under a hard rain of shrapnel and minié balls. There seemed no possibility that both horse and rider would not instantly be killed. But no. Forrest leaned forward, the horse’s front hooves regained the ground, and with a forward sweep of his blade he cried, “I’ll lead ye!”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 14 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage; Reprint edition (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Madison Smartt Bell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	The Color of Night More Civil War novels: The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright The March by E. L. Doctorow

Bibliography:

• The Washington Square Ensemble (1983)
• Waiting for the End of the World (1985)
• Straight Cut (Hard Case Crime) (1986)
• The Year of Silence (1987)
• Soldier’s Joy (1989)
• Barking Man and Other Stories (1990)
• Doctor Sleep (1991)
• Save Me, Joe Louis (1993)
• Ten Indians (1996)
• Anything Goes (2002)
• Devil’s Dream (2009)
• The Color of Night (April 2011)

Haitian series:

• All Soul’s Rising (1995) 
• Master of the Crossroads (2000)
• The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004)

Nonfiction:

• Narrative Design: A Writer’s Guide to Structure (1997)
• Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft and Form (2000)
• Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (2005)
• Toussaint L’Ouverture (2006)
• Charm City: A Walk Through Baltimore (2007)

“Stipp slammed his hand against the wall. He had not wanted Mary by his side, and then he couldn’t have asked for anyone better. She had stayed calm. The only requisite that really mattered, but she had given more: intelligence and charity. When that boy had died, flailing, disoriented, shouting, reliving the battle, the blood arcing everywhere, Mary had thought to kneel by the boy’s side and sing. To sing! The boy had died to the unsteady voice of a tone-deaf, blood-covered angel.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 26, 2010)

Sometimes the reader is lucky enough to pick up a book that they can get lost in. Place and time disappear and all that is left is immersion in the written word. We become one with the book. My Name is Mary Sutter is such a book. From the time I started it until the very last page, all that existed for me was the story – the ebb and flow of events. I was transported.

The time is 1861 and the novel starts in Albany, New York. Mary Sutter is a determined woman, intelligent and headstrong. She is not like the average woman of her time. “She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe.” Mary is an accomplished midwife but she has dreams of becoming a surgeon. Never has a woman been admitted into medical school nor been accepted as an apprentice to a working surgeon. Mary writes letter after letter applying to the Albany School of Medicine and does not even receive the courtesy of a reply. Mary approaches an Albany surgeon, James Blevins, and inquires about apprenticing with him. He declines to take Mary on but they begin a friendship that endures time and hardship.

The Sutters are supportive and close. Mary has a twin, Jenny, who is as unlike Mary as any person can be. Still, they are close and loving. Amelia, Mary’s mother, is a midwife from whom Mary has learned her skills. The family comes from a long line of midwives. Christian is Mary’s beloved younger brother. The family is financially secure due to Mary’s father’s business. When the book opens, Mary’s father has recently died and the family is in mourning.

A new family moves in next door and Thomas Fall, an attractive young man, is drawn into the lives of the Sutter family. Mary is instantly attracted to him and feels like he is responsive to her feelings. However, he is more drawn to her sister Jenny and ends up marrying her. Mary is crushed. At the same time, the Civil War is beginning. Mary decides that she needs to leave Albany to mend her heart and help out in the war efforts. She hopes to find someone she can apprentice with in Washington and attain her dream of becoming a surgeon. At the same time, her brother Christian signs up to fight for the Union.

Nothing can prepare Mary for the horrific conditions in Washington. Though there is a war in progress, the Union government has not prepared for the medical necessities wrought by battle. The hospitals are not equipped with anything but the barest of necessities. Most of the surgeons who are manning the hospitals have never had to do an amputation, let alone take care of epidemics like typhoid or dysentery that are caused by close quarters and unsanitary conditions. Additionally, in 1861, treatments consisted primarily of whiskey, morphine, quinine, and bleeding the patient. Causes of most diseases were rarely understood.

It is in Washington that Mary meets a surgeon, William Stipp, who takes her under his wing and agrees to apprentice her. This is a dream come true for Mary. Mary ends up going to the battlefields, living in the trenches with the soldiers, providing medicine in the worst of conditions.

The book provides information about the Civil War at the same time that it tells Mary’s story. We learn about Lincoln’s travails, his health, tragedies and his difficulty finding good military leaders for the Union. I was especially fascinated to learn that Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union army was Robert E. Lee but that Lee went with the Confederates when his home state of Virginia chose to secede.

We are privy to the stench and filth that is Washington. During the time this book takes place, from 1861 to 1863, Washington’s streets are amok with sewage, body parts, and smells so bad that it is difficult to breathe unless one covers their face. This book tells a fascinating story about a fascinating time. There is tragedy and there is hope. There is just enough history to provide context but not so much that it becomes boring. Not usually a fan of historical fiction myself, I can vouch for the fact that there is just the right balance of history and narrative to keep this book fascinating from page one until its end. Readers who enjoyed Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier will be drawn to this book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 86 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult; 1 edition (May 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Robin Oliveira
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Civil War novels: The Almagation Polka by Stephen Wright The March by E.L. Doctorow

Bibliography:

• My Name is Mary Sutter (May 2010)

“Many of the soldiers must have stolen food. I would have. If that little boy shooting people with his finger had an apple in his pocket, I would grab his wrist hard and make him give it to me. Of course, I’d wait until we were out of sight of everyone. I decide not to say anything about being hungry. I imagine the dead Confederates, so thick on the road that the Yankees said they could walk down the whole length of it without stepping on anything but dead Rebels.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (NOV 29, 2009)

Set in the 1960s, Amanda C. Gable’s debut novel spans two pivotal times in American history: the Civil War and the century-later Civil Rights movement. Eleven year old Kat, a Civil War buff, finds herself on a sudden trip from Marietta, Georgia to Maine with her manic-depressive mother who has decided to start her own antiques store up north. At first, Kat believes that they are on vacation, but the signs are immediately evident to the reader: her mother is leaving her father. Not until days later does Kat discover that her mother intends for this move to be permanent. Kat, loyal to her mother as well as to those family members left behind, finds herself emotionally under siege.

Like many children of dysfunctional parents, Kat knows how to take charge when necessary, and she convinces her mother that the best places to buy antiques on their way north are in the smaller, back-route towns. Her mother acquiesces – she is all too happy to be cared for – and so she gives Kat the navigator job. Kat plots a route that takes them through the major battlefields of the Civil War, from Appomattox to Gettysburg, enabling her to imagine that she is a Confederate general taking charge of the troops. This fantasy cast in another time provides a coping mechanism for the young girl as her mother’s actions become less and less reliable and Kat is forced into a caretaker role. It also acknowledges on a subconscious level that she cannot win, no matter how resourceful or brave or cunning she is. Although the “campaign” is doomed on one level – one cannot run from the past – it provides a unique opportunity for Kat to discover her own independence and some truths about her mother.

Author Gable creates a convincing eleven-year-old point-of-view that is both observant and yet not fully aware of the subtleties of the adult world. The mother-daughter journey, even though it makes Kat more vulnerable to dangers, fosters the innate strength that Kat harbors, thanks in part to a better role model, her Aunt Laura, who appears as a strong, intelligent presence in flashbacks. Even in the midst of fantasy, Kat is more realistic than her mother ever will be.

The Confederate General passages are often clever mixes of Civil War history and glimpses into the more private civil war between Kat and her mother; however, these brief passages are the least compelling aspect of the novel, as they do not add much to our understanding of either the girl or the war. More successful are Kat’s exploration of battlefields and the stories they hold. The strangers she encounters at these sites, people who are equally drawn to this part of American history, compose a portrait of a country in flux as the politics of the sixties set the stage for major changes. In addition to mention of civil rights and the continuing division between North and South, another coming “war” is hinted at: the Women’s Rights Movement. After all, Kat casts herself as a female general, and those who protect and educate her are all feisty, intelligent, and resourceful women.

This quiet portrait of a young girl prematurely on the cusp of adulthood and her relationship with her struggling mother reflects the larger battle of a country grappling with its own issues. The divisions between sides may have historical precedence, but, as Kat hopes, perhaps history is not always destined to repeat itself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (August 11, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AMAZON PAGE:	The Confederate General Rides North
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amanda C. Gable
EXTRA	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another Feisty 11-year-old: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Brady ———— Civil War Fiction: The Wolf Pit by Marly Youmans Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles ———— Civil Rights fiction: Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund

Bibliography:

• The Confederate General Rides North (August 2009)