Concluding volume of the Shaara family’s lightly fictionalized chronicle of the Civil War, one of the more unusual (and successful) recent projects in publishing. Michael Shaara (who died in 1998) wrote the Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels (1974), a novel that dealt with the pivotal three-day battle of Gettysburg, and matched a shrewd reading of character to careful research. In 1996, Shaara’s son issued Gods and Generals, a fictional treatment of the war’s early years. This new story traces the war’s sad progress from a few days after Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg until his surrender, in 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse. While The Killer Angels used the war to probe basic issues of human nature, the more recent works in the series are more focused on catching the war’s day-to-day reality, which they do quite successfully. Both focus largely on the experiences and reflections of a group of officers, Union and Confederate, at the center of the fighting. This time out, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are principal characters, and Shaara is careful to hew closely to the historical record in describing their moods, thoughts, and actions. Through their eyes, and the eyes of a half a dozen other figures, we follow the bloody campaigns in the Wilderness, the siege of Petersburg, the collapse of Southern resistance, and the surrender of Lee’s army, in a scene rendered with great precision and vigor. Shaara’s battle episodes nicely balance an admirable grasp of strategy with an understanding of the war’s horror and cost. While it’s hard to see how the younger Shaara’s books offer anything new as either fiction or history on the subject, their swift pace and great accuracy do make for a vivid—and sometimes moving — review of a defining moment in American history. (First serial to Civil War Times Illustrated; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-40491-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
The most recent caper for Fenwick Travers, lately involved in picaresque adventures in Cuba and China (not reviewed): here, we learn how this agent provocateur was the key to securing US sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone in 1903. Fenny's boon companion, Diamond Jim Brady, lets him in on a couple of sure things that Fenny badly needs in order to repair his wasted fortunes until he can get his hands on fiancÇe Alice Brenoble's trust fund. But the fix and the horse both go bad and Fenny takes vengeance with his smoking Colt .45, only to be interrupted by federal agents who whisk him to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt. There, he's briefed by Secretary of War Elihu Root, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, and Teddy himself on the need for a canal, the politics of the Isthmus, and the bankrupt French effort of the 1880s. Unfortunately, though, Panama is part of Colombia, and the government in Bogot† is both greedy and obdurate. Fenny's role is to stir the Panamanian pot until a case can be made for gunboat support of a coup whose leaders will favor US interests. The ante goes up when Fenny is accosted by another old friend, Richard Harding Davis, the newspaperman, whose cronies include William Nelson Cromwell (of Sullivan & Cromwell), general counsel to the New Panama Canal Company, and Philipp Bunau-Varilla, whose investment in the busted French canal company, he hopes, might be recouped. The men know all about Fenny's assignment and add a healthy bribe to encourage his efforts. With money-hunger and lust his constant companions, Fenny carries out his orders in style, coping with battle and bedroom, captivity and catastrophe, and showing his customary high regard for his own appetites. A highly diverting history lesson, full of real-life figures behaving as they might have behaved; and Fenny is an entertaining scoundrel.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-89141-481-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
A thoroughly imaginative tale of a family's rediscovery and re-creation of their dying father and themselves, by the author of After Gregory (1994), etc. Wright's story unfolds not only in the points of view, but in the thoughts and actual letters, speeches, dialogues, poems, and articles of its many characters. Thomas Westerly, a 72-year-old retired geology professor and college president, suffers a stroke at his home on a New England island, occasioning his many children and their various appendages to come form a deathwatch. Known to be ``a good man'' and a liberal, compassionate university president who's perhaps not suited to the politics of such a position, Thomas raised an unfailingly polite family, each member infused with his own love for writing and unwillingness to express real emotion. Their father suffered his stroke while attempting to intervene when a local bankteller, for unknown reasons, took his own family hostage. At first no one knows why, but Thomas approached the house and, shocked by the teller's warning shots, stroked out. Now, the family gathers, thinking death is near. The old man, though, begins to recover, then asks his oldest son to sort through his papers and remove anything unsuitable. Later, Thomas sneaks out of the hospital in the middle of the night, again headed for the hostage scene, and again suffers a stroke, this one fatal. More family arrive, each with their own relations to Thomas and to each other. Marriages collapse, secret love is had, and true feelings are slowly revealed. Meanwhile, Thomas's children, puzzled as to what exactly would be ``unsuitable,'' read through his papers, discovering that their reserved father had both a passionate and a dark side, parts of him they never previously benefitted from seeing. A wonderfully chaotic, unique look at a complex familywhat they really think of each other, how they truly are, and how they got that way.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-880909-36-7
Page Count: 285
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
