March by Geraldine Brooks

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, March is the Australian writer’s second novel. It’s set in the American Civil War, and is ostensibly based on a character, March, from Louisa May Alcott’s 19th century novel Little Women. In Little Women, March is the girls’ father, who volunteers to go south and serve as an army chaplain. He is a marginal figure in Alcott's book, being away in the fighting for some time. The actual model Brooks used for March is the historical figure of Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He was one of the leaders of the Transcendentalists, who cultivated the belief that God is revealed in nature and in human beings, if they follow the right principles. The Transcendentalists championed pacifism, vegetarianism, women’s rights, and the kind of education in which a natural thirst for knowledge is cultivated and facts are not crammed into young minds.

Brooks is an accomplished writer, and she fluently depicts March’s sensitivity to his physical surroundings and to his companions. In Virginia, he is removed from his first post as an army chaplain, since his faith is too humanist to give solid comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers. Not believing in a literal hell, or in Christ as God, his view of humanity bumbling and stumbling itself into a mess does not sit well with the men or with his superiors. Critics of the book have found fault with March’s excessive self-flagellation, with his despair at witnessing pillaging and violence on the side of the Northern soldiers as well as on the Southern side. In contrast, the character of March in Little Women, although undeveloped, is one of stability and purpose – a father who steadies his wife and girls through their trials and sorrows.

March is transferred to a plantation whose absent owner supports the North and has leased the land to a Northerner come down to make a profit. March is to help by teaching the former slave children. The plantation has been ransacked both by the Union Army and local bands of raiders, who live on what they can pillage. Brooks’ depiction of the final devastation that takes place on the plantation reads like something out of Rwanda, and the source she cites does not match the unspeakable cruelty and horror which Brooks presents as commonplace. (When this kind of violence did occur, her source relates how the local residents rose up and administered their own justice after the sheriff and his men apprehended the assailants.) In Brooks’ landscape, there is no sheriff, and evil is done with impunity.

Brooks’ literary license ends up as an assault on the principles which Bronson Alcott propagated in his writings and teachings. An assault, because there is no surcease - there is no “balm in Gilead” found in the novel’s experience. Here history is not “unveiled” simply through engrossing characters and vivid landscapes. March, a broken man, or one who was never truly whole, creeps back to his family’s side, without hope and without redemption. This may be Brooks’ world, but it is not everyone’s.

Newer Civil War Fiction

Devil’s Dream / by Madison Smartt Bell

In the years leading up to the Civil War, soon-to-be Confederate General

Nathan Bedford Forrest marries a woman, has a child and adopts the position of slave owner in the rural south. Fast forwarding in time to Sherman’s march, which targeted Forrest directly, the general tries to fend off the South’s inevitable defeat as he looks back on his past. (FIC BELL)

Sweetsmoke: A Novel / by David Fuller

Cassius is a secretly educated slave on a tobacco plantation in Virginia.

 While the Civil War rages on around him, Cassius is pursuing his own cause: to find out who killed his adoptive mother, a free black woman named Emoline Justice. Setting out on the road, employing various aliases and ruses to avoid suspicion, Cassius encounters a world seemingly bent on chaos as he confronts soldiers, slave traders, spies, slaves both free and those still unliberated in his determined quest. (FIC FULLER)

Escape From Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War / by Gene Hackman
Following capture by a Confederate regiment in 1864, Union Captain NathanParker and 23 of his men are transported to Andersonville prison in Georgia where deplorable treatment prompts Parker to hatch an escape plan. After the daring plan is carried off and the Captain finds himself on the outside, he formulates another daring plan: to improvise a scheme to rescue his remaining troops. (FIC HACKMAN)

Home Land: A Novel / by Barbara Hambly
As a nation goes to war and tensions rise between North and South, two

 women become close friends as pen pals sharing their lives to each other via correspondence. Susanna Ashford, a plantation owner’s wife, and Cora Poole, who lives on an isolated Maine island, find that they have more in common than just liking the same books. They also share a common bond of peace and companionship in a time of conflict. (FIC HAMBLY)

All Other Nights: A Novel / by Dara Horn
In 1862, Jacob Rappaport, a jew, runs away from home and enlists in the Union army where it doesn’t take for his superiors to catch wind of who he really is. Jacob comes from a very powerful mercantile family whose holdings are headquartered in both the South and the North. The 19-year-old is quickly employed as a spy to help the Union get an edge on the supply end of things. But when he’s assigned to infiltrate a Confederate spy, a young jewess named Eugenia Levy, Jacob finds that his mission has become endangered by his growing attraction to the girl. (FIC HORN)

Hallam’s War / by Elisabeth Payne Rosen
Leaving Charleston for what they think will be a better life in Tennessee, Hugh and Serena Hallam have set up shop at a farm called Palmyria with their

three children and 12 slaves. With war on the horizon, the Hallams are still hopeful that a peaceful resolution will come. But when the conflict can no longer be put off and war is declared, Hugh, a West Point graduate, heads off to fight for the Confederacy leaving Serena to deal with what is already the daunting task of running the farm. (FIC ROSEN)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: or Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Christian and an Abolitionist, meaning that she was opposed to slavery. She first started Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a serial in June 1851, in the abolitionist newspaper, The National Era. The series was immensely popular, and the book was printed in March of 1852. The book was a runaway best seller, both at home and abroad. While anti-slavery was not a popular sentiment at the time, Stowe’s book helped stir up feelings both for and against the institution of slavery.

Reading the book today, it is hard to remember that slavery had such acceptance at one time, and that Ms. Stowe’s portrayal of African-Americans as not only creatures who lived and breathed, but as thinking , feeling and caring people was unheard of for most Americans. It was a radical book. The story is about Uncle Tom, an older slave in Kentucky, and Eliza, a young woman, a slave in the same Kentucky family. Tom is sold to pay his master’s debt, and Eliza’s child is sold also, except that she runs away when she hears what her master has done. Their separate stories make up the book.

Today we use the phrase “bleeding heart” in a way to make fun of people, but in that time a writer like Ms. Stowe had no qualms about using that expression seriously. Her work has been criticized for being overly sentimental, creating characters who are angel-like, as little Eva, a Southern planter’s daughter, and devil-like, as Tom’s last owner Simon Legree. Suffice it to say, that Ms. Stowe has defended herself that she wrote it as an argument, and so the book should not be expected to have literary merit. But the characters are compelling, even if their strengths and weaknesses are exaggerated. And in accordance with Ms. Stowe’s Christianity, their failings are always excused, encouraged and even aided by the world, while sympathy, love and compassion find obstacles at every turn.

The character Uncle Tom, as a Christian, believes his body may be bought and sold, but not his soul. His character has been maligned by white and black alike, for what has been called his ‘servile’ acceptance of his condition. Yet in the book, he is a strong figure, one who many turn to for advice and consolation – the master as well as the slave.

Abraham Lincoln met Ms. Stowe in 1862, after the Civil War had started. His words: “So this is the little lady who started this Great War”, may not be entirely accurate. Different economic structures, state vs. federal rights - these and other concerns were also at issue. Still, Uncle Tom’s Cabin played an important role in that war; the greatest separation that this country has so far experienced.

The Butterfly Effect: How Your Life Matters / by Andy Andrews

"Every single thing you do matters. You have been created as one of a kind. You have been created in order to make a difference. You have within you the power to change the world."

Among the less heralded heroes of the Civil War was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a college professor with no prior military experience who rose through the ranks of the Union army ultimately making Brigadier General by the war's end. At the Battle of Gettysburg, the then Colonel Chamberlain did one of the most daring (some would say stupid) things any commanding officer could ever do: he ordered a charge of his infantry unit--dwindled down to only 80 men and all out of ammunition excepting their bayonets--down from their elevated post towards the oncoming Confederate brigade of well over 400 men, all armed with adequate ammunition. The gamble paid off. Chamberlain and his men were able to hinge in the Confederates, capturing a multitude of troops and securing the strategic high ground known as Little Round Top. Historians have pinned Chamberlain's charge as the critical juncture in the battle which turned the tide in favor of the Union army who ultimately won the Civil War, preserved the United States as a nation (not a conglomeration of federated states like Europe which it is speculated that America would have become had the South won) and aided in establishing the "America" of today. Chamberlain's charge changed the course of American and, in effect, world history, making him one of the most recognizable cases of one rather ordinary individual altering the course of human events.
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Most people are familiar with the theory of the Butterfly Effect in which a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia can indelibly alter the shifts in wind currents thousands of miles away so much so that a hurricane is started in Africa. For some, this has been translated to mean that the smallest human actions can have the largest impact on mankind. Andy Andrews certainly thinks so. The author and motivational speaker was once homeless, living on the streets in various towns along the Gulf Coast at his lowest point. In the last twenty years, he's transformed his poverty into prosperity, inspired numerous people struggling through hard times and been featured on various media outlets throughout the country. In addition to charming stories like the one above involving General Chamberlain, Andrews latest inspirational book includes other anecdotes on individuals who've made a difference simply by taking a stand for what's right and acting as opposed to doing nothing in times of crisis. Actions matter is what Andrews tries to get across in this very tiny book which could probably be read in one 15-20 minute sitting. What you do matters so much so that sometimes it can alter the course of history. (158.1 ANDREWS)

This first novel of Charles Frazier's, which came out in 1977, won critical acclaim for its portrayal of a Confederate soldier’s journey back to his Appalachian mountain home in North Carolina. He was wounded and is still recovering when he decides to desert from the army hospital. He is sickened by war and the killing he has witnessed, and only wants to go home. He is not thinking of reuniting with his family, but with the woman he loves. It’s not clear how long the soldier, Inman, has lived near Cold Mountain, but he loves it and is hankering for it almost as much as for his love, Ada. One reviewer, Charles McGrath of the New York Times, speculated that this book was so popular because of its underlying premise that people were simpler and purer then – that they had a closer tie to the land and to each other. We like these stories, where the journey is fraught with danger and defeat, and we like Ada’s story of a city girl learning to be a farmer, after her father’s death. All of the farming details are satisfying, especially if we don’t have to be there, living through those backbreaking chores. There’s nothing good about war, in Frazier’s viewpoint, and the men who run away are victims to be hounded by Federal troops and local volunteers who are happy to get paid for each deserter they catch. Except they’re not only caught but in many cases killed, for no reason but just meanness and spite. Frazier seems to be saying that there are plenty of villains, but no heroes, just people like Inman dishing out vengeance where needed, although it’s never enough.

Tishomingo Blues / by Elmore Leonard

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Dennis Lenahan is a traveling high-dive artist making a living performing daredevil-esque dives into a miniscule water tank at mostly low-end hotels and resorts. His latest gig has him set for the rest of the summer at an Indian Hotel and Casino in rural Tunica, Mississippi. It's a place where remnants of the Old South are still going strong, even if new ideas and organizations have steadily infiltrated the territory. Unbeknownst to Dennis, the resort and its clientele, primarily consisting of traveling businessmen and middle-income vacationers, is heavily involved in the drug business run by the Dixie Mafia. It isn't long before Dennis learns how much involved the hotel really is when he accidentally witnesses a murder below his perch on his high dive platform. Warned to keep silent about what he's just seen, Dennis does his best to mind his own business, planning to wait it out.

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Things become even more complicated when a smooth-talking gangster from Detroit, Robert Taylor, befriends Dennis and gradually incorporates him into his masterplan for moving in on the Dixie Mafia's turf. Soon Dennis can't help but become involved in the proceedings as caught in the middle of the conflict, he has no choice but to play his part in the battle, one that takes on literal proportions when the rival gangs (all of the major players included) face off in a Civil War reenacment.

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Elmore Leonard doesn't know how to write an out-of-place sentence or bad line of dialogue. Effortlessly, his stories and characters elicit the sort of wise-guy demeanor and cool back-and-forths readers can't get enough of. His over 50 novels have him squarely established as one of the country's leading authors of crime fiction.