Keneally's best novel yet, ripest fruit of an imagination that has
been grinding for years in an effort to energize history within its
fiction - sometimes head-on. sometimes obliquely, but never with
quite full success. Success has come. The book is about the
American Civil War, about a few soldiers - Usaph, Gus, Cates,
Colonel Lafcadio Wheat - belonging to the Shenandoah Volunteers
that make up a section of the "Stonewall" troops under the command
of General Tom Jackson. Jackson here is a nearly empyrean figure
who brilliantly, woefully outclasses his Union counterpart
McClellan; and by using Jackson as a near deity-figure, Keneally is
able, very deftly, to give an overall shape (the shape of military
tactics) to the senseless death of mere boys. Small scenes, then,
can be concentrated on - and they range from the heartbreakingly
idyllic (two Union soldiers, two Shenandoah Volunteers sitting down
for a rest together in a glade) to the gruesome (limb-flinging
carnage among the morning lupins at Antietam). But Keneally keeps
his eye on the masterful Jackson, and the dartings of strategy -
loops and salients - make an almost beautiful and plastic frame
around the awfullest of particulars. A sub-plot involving a
Union-spy pair - a British journalist, a Confederate nurse - is of
less import; and Keneally occasionally overuses Americanisms. Yet
these are minor objections in a book that keeps the reading heart
astir simply by its resonant, plain eloquence, Tolstoyan at its
best: "They were certainly proud but had never fought before today.
This evening it seemed that God had been saving this hour specially
for them. For if they looked at the sunset one minute, there was
nothing but a proper golden radiance above a black line of forest.
And the next there were batteries galloping out into the open to
get an uninterrupted line of fire on them, and there were long
lines of men, who didn't seem any better dressed or any more rushed
than laborers, moving out of the woods there on that ridge." A
grave and breathtaking book, a model historical novel by a writer
growing ever better. (Kirkus Reviews)
With a new introduction by Thomas Keneally. 'The best novel of the
Civil War since The Red Badge of Courage' Newsweek As the Civil War
tears America apart, General Stonewall Jackson leads a troop of
Confederate soldiers on a long trek towards the battle they believe
will be a conclusive victory. Through their hopes, fears and
losses, Keneally searingly conveys both the drama and mundane
hardship of war, and brings to life one of the most emotive
episodes in American history.
General
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