A GAMBLE ON LIBERTY

Smith’s Civil War drama focuses on intra-family battles and divisions in East Tennessee.

This historical novel, based upon the experiences of farmer Robert Lapsey Gamble and his wife, Permelia Tillery Gamble, opens in February of 1861, one week after Tennessee voted to remain in the Union. Trouble has been brewing for the past year: Although the county has a majority of secessionists, it also contains a sizable group of unionists, who are themselves divided between abolitionists and those who are conflicted about the slavery issue but do not want to go to war. Robert and Permelia belong to this latter group. There are local skirmishes, and one of the Gambles’ neighbors sets their barn on fire. On June 8, three months after the war has begun, Tennessee secedes from the Union. Two of Robert’s brothers, who have moved to Nashville, enlist in the Confederate army; another of Robert’s brothers is arrested by the Confederates for burning the bridge crossing the Hiwassee River in furtherance of Union Gen. Sherman’s plan to capture the county. It is clear that Robert will be drawn into the war—he escapes to Kentucky, where he enlists in the Union army. Permelia, along with Robert’s young sister and two enslaved people, Nero and Bessie (inherited from Robert’s father), are left guarding the homefront. Smith’s narrative, an engrossing mixture of fact and fiction, was inspired by family tales shared with him by Robert and Permelia’s great-grandson. Skillfully employing period vernacular (“You, sir, are a lout. You would instigate violence on the Sabbath at the door of our church? Shame on you”), the author delivers an evocative rendition of a blood-soaked time and place in which notions of loyalty and culture conflict with changing philosophical perspectives. The complex primary characters are carefully drawn, as evidenced by Robert’s gradual transition from happy farmer to formidable warrior. And as readers chart the ways in which political differences deteriorate into brutal violence, it is not difficult to see the similarities between that time and our own.

Disturbing, thoughtful, and historically informative, with memorable characters.