'290' - A Novel of the American Civil War

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'290' - A Novel of the American Civil War

Name: '290' - A Novel of the American Civil War
Author: Donn Wonnell
ISBN: 978-0-692-42260-1

VOLUME II: THE LAIRD GUNBOAT

From the Blockade Runner series

by Donn Wonnell ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

An often good read, particularly for Civil War enthusiasts.

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Political intrigue in Britain threatens to scupper Trenton Grey’s plans to continue as a Confederate blockade runner in Wonnell’s (‘290’: Volume I: Blockade Runner, 2015) sequel.

Grey is in Liverpool, England, supervising the construction of a new ship to replace his, which was commandeered by the Confederate navy, as well as another, called 290, whose owner intends to use it to disrupt Union shipping. Grey is lonely and longs for his cousin Joanna, who is waiting for him in the Bahamas. To circumvent a law against “equipping and arming” ships in England to use against countries with which Britain is not at war, the shipyard is relying on a legal opinion that distinguishes “equipping and arming” from basic construction. The U.S. Consul in Liverpool, Thomas Dudley, gets wind of this, and the American minister in London, Charles Adams, convinces the authorities to adopt a more expansive reading of the law. Despite the sharpest maneuverings of the British system by Confederate sympathizer Austen Layard, undersecretary to the British Foreign Minister, an official order to seize the 290 slowly wends its way through the British legal system. Layard connives to warn Grey, but will the 290 be able to flee Liverpool before the American steamship Tuscarora arrives to shut it down? As with the previous volume, this novel is rife with authentic detail and period language. Wonnell’s knowledge of the British governmental structure rivals his impressive knowledge of sailing ships and Civil War history. The result, again, is a book of impressive authenticity with a compelling plot and diverse characters. It starts off a bit slowly, but once the intrigue starts, it’s gripping. However, the author might have given more depth to the female characters and expanded on the social activity in Liverpool and New Providence, which is important to the plot but given short shrift. The romance between Trent and Joanna is also a bit melodramatic, and a few action scenes early on could have made some of the extensive background information on British law and politics a bit easier to digest.

An often good read, particularly for Civil War enthusiasts.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-0-692-42260-1

Page Count: 386

Publisher: Brail Books LLC

Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LONESOME DOVE

A NOVEL (SIMON & SCHUSTER CLASSICS)

by Larry McMurtry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1985

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This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.