This slim historical novel reflects the horrors and the excitement of the Civil War through the eyes of its 12-year-old hero, Steven Moore; and the book's ultimate success depends on how believable we find the child's voice. Jones (To the Winds, 1996) attempts to put a redeeming spin on the ignominious end of the slave-holding agrarian South, advancing the romantic image of a benign, paternalistic Confederacy where slaves are treated as family. Accompanied by a male slave his own age, Moore leaves his distraught mother in order to penetrate enemy lines and beg his father, an heroic Confederate captain, to desert his desperately beleaguered troops because his wife and babies are ill. Credibility suffers when the starving, half-frozen soldiers eagerly donate food and articles of comfort to ensure the two intrepid lads' well-being. Jones assumes too much of the reader's knowledge of local geography and history, and the chronicle sometimes blurs into a meaningless litany of the futile, last-ditch efforts of proud but decimated Confederate forces to regain dominion over their homeland in middle Tennessee. In the end, we get a boy's-eye view of an old man's sanitized image of the gentility of the old South.
Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly
YAAn important addition to Civil War literature. Jones tells of the occupation of Nashville, Tennessee, by Union soldiers. However, the perspective from which he writes makes the story especially appealing to young people. Now a grown man, the main character recalls the events of the war and its impact on his family when he was 12. Steven and his family live just outside Nashville and are trying to hold on as the war rages around them. His father has gone off to fight with the Confederates, and the family has heard nothing from or about him. Steven, with the certainty of youth, sets off with his slave companion, Dink, to locate his father, give him some food, and return with word of his condition. Jones writes with a tender and understated simplicity to convey the confusion and tragedy the boys experience as they muddle through fog, smoke, and cannon and gun fire. The scene in which the boys witness the ambush of black Union troops is particularly touching. Dink is deeply shaken by the sight, and Steven finally says, "They were Yankees too, come to take our country away from us. We got to fight back." To which Dink replies after a silence, "They was niggers just like me."Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
A somber, spare portrait of the Confederacy's twilight, as witnessed by a 12-year-old.
The plot has the simplicity of a folk tale. Steven Moore sets out to find his father, a soldier, on the eve of a great battle, and becomes an eyewitness to the carnage. Jones, the author of seven previous novels (To the Winds, 1996, etc.), has the measured cadence of southern voices down perfectly. The book is purportedly a memoir written by Moore decades after the events it describes, as he seeks to make sense of what he experienced. In December 1864, the ragged, shell-shocked Confederate army under Gen. Hood moves to confront the Union forces outside Nashville. Steven's younger sister is seriously ill, his mother exhausted, their farm, close to Nashville, menaced by Union forces, so he decides to bring his father, an officer in Hood's forces, home. He takes Dink, one of his family's slaves, with him. Dink, who is Steven's age, views the trip, at first, as a curious adventure. But their encounter with a black Union soldier, who tells Dink that he is free, confuses and disturbs him. The boys reach Hood's army just as the battle of Nashville begins. Steven discovers that battles are entirely unlike his imaginings: They are confused, bloody, terrifying events. Dink is killed, and a wounded Steven begins a hallucinatory journey with the retreating Confederates. These scenes have a raw power and harsh originality that set them apart from most recent fiction about the War. The narrative, though, suffers by seeming so entirely partisan. Dink is a cipher. The grown Steven's rhapsodic celebration of the Confederate soldier, and his defense of slavery—while perfectly believable in this character—diminish the book's power somewhat. The story would have benefitted from some authorial distance. It seems, finally, too partisan to be entirely compelling.
A flawed but intermittently powerful work.
