Wilderness by Lance Weller

Rating

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The book's description from Lance Weller's website:

Thirty years after the Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. Wilderness is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It’s a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war.

As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life—from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

Quite simply, Wilderness is a beautiful and heartbreaking story. Beautiful in the writing which inspires strong emotions of compassion, sympathy and appreciation of both the nature of people touched by tragedy and suffering and yet persevering to live a meaningful life without giving in to despair and loss of morals, and the Nature, with its landscape, the wilderness surrounding humans, this powerful element of rebirth, always escaping absolute destruction. Heartbreaking in how much pure evil can live in the hearts of men who are determined to hurt others and ruin their lives simply because they can. Heartbreaking also in watching innocent people get hurt, suffer and die in the nightmare of what is perhaps the worst of all wars, civil war (not that there are good wars because there aren't, ever). And Civil War and the battle of the Wilderness is an important event in American history this novel deals with as well.

The Battle of the Wilderness in 1864

Lance Weller is such a talented writer that saying how unbelievable it is his Wilderness is a debut novel seems somehow trite and taking away something from the depth of Mr. Weller's gift. It just somehow doesn't seem to matter whether it's his first or tenth novel. What matters is the story, the characters (good and evil and somewhere in-between) and the meaning, all of which will linger in one's memory for quite some time. Really, I would be surprised and not a little disappointed if anyone who reads it, would find Wilderness lacking in anything.

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FTC: I received an e-galley of Wilderness by Lance Weller from the publisher, Bloomsbury via NetGalley for a review.

Two Brothers. One North, One South by David H. Jones

For a fan of historical fiction, I have surprisingly stayed away from books set in the times of the Civil War or any other American history. I truly have no answer as to why that is but I decided it was high time I added the history of United States to my repertoire of historical fiction. Therefore, it was only natural for me to use the opportunity to read and review Two Brothers. One North, One South by David H. Jones.

Two Brothers is a story of two men, William and Clifton Prentiss, brothers alienated by the Civil War and their personal beliefs. It starts with a famous literary figure, Walt Whitman attending to William Prentiss in Armory State Hospital in Washington D.C. William lost his leg at a battle four days before the Confederate Army capitulation and subsequent end of the war. The surgery turned out to be unsuccessful and William dies after a couple of weeks of struggle. During those weeks, Whitman is the only person who faithfully visits the younger Prentiss brother and listens with sadness and rapture to William’s history. William Prentiss was a Rebel soldier from Maryland. At the outbreak of war, he shunned the authority of his state and the Union and joined the secessionists in Virginia. His older brother, Clifton stayed loyal to President Lincoln and to the Union. This estrangement is a documented fact, not fiction as well as the brothers’ first and final reunion on the battlefield where they were both mortally wounded. Two Brothers is a form of compiled recollections of the wartime events as told by William to Whitman and by Clifton to Whitman and to his two remaining brothers, Melville and John who stayed at Clifton’s hospital bedside until the whole story was told.

I have many mixed feelings about this book. I give a lot credit to the author, Mr. Jones for writing an incredibly well documented detailed story. Not being a writer myself, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to write such a book that combines true events with fiction. However, even though Two Brothers wasn’t a bad novel, it wasn’t unfortunately a great historical epic either (I use the epic comparison because this book certainly had that potential). I must say that too many parts of the novel read like non-fiction rather than historical fiction, and because I was not prepared for that, I became a little put off by it. The author’s knowledge of the Civil War and events that took place in Maryland on the outset of it is evident. I learned a lot of interesting and useful facts of which I hadn’t known before, including the fact that Maryland was so greatly conflicted about its loyalties. Also, its unique position as one of the Border States where fathers were fighting against sons and brothers set against brothers, gave me a deeper understanding of how tragic the Civil War truly was. Subsequently, the way all this was conveyed on the pages of Two Brothers made me wonder whether Mr. Jones would have been better off just writing a non-fiction book.

There were also parts of the book that I did enjoy. I was surprised and glad to read about the Cary sisters, the role in aiding the Confederates agenda, and the gender shift that occurred in the South during the war. It was very captivating to read about the central role of women taking strong stands and fighting the war in the backyards of their households. I think that the story of Hetty Cary and other Confederate women would make a fine novel of its own. As a matter of fact, Hetty was portrayed in such a positive way that I just had to find out what she really looked like and whether she indeed was of breathtaking beauty to which no man was resistant. Here’s her photograph and I’ll let you judge for yourself.

All and all, if you are a fan of ballistic fiction with plenty of detailed descriptions of military events, you will most likely appreciate this novel a lot more than I did. Otherwise, it’s still an interesting book to read, it did encourage me to read more of the Civil War novels but because of dry descriptions of battles and maneuvers I kept losing focus and interest more often than I’d have liked.

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Special Thanks to Paula K. from AME, Inc. for sending me a copy of this book.

Alsi, if you'd like to find out more about this book or its author visit the official site for Two Brothers that includes David H. Jones's blog.