I can’t recall the last Civil War novel I’ve read. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I’ve got to admit that America’s deadly schism of the late 19th Century was never ingrained in my psyche simply by right of birth. We sent soldiers into the War, sure, but the War never came home. We own no battlegrounds and we host very few if any reenactments. I doubt if any of my ancestors were personally affected by the War. Our state was no older than most of the boy soldiers fighting in the War, and so we children and descendants feel like it sort of passed us by.

Reading an historical novel like this one, involving real heroes in a real battle with a true outcome, I feel like I’m finally part of the picture. New Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have compiled an historically accurate record of what occurred at “The Battle of the Crater”, an horrifically deadly skirmish that could have ended the War but instead ended the lives of thousands of men and the careers of a few more.

The story follows a young newspaper sketch artist who serves as the benevolent spy of President Abraham Lincoln himself. The President reads the newspapers, but he also wants to know the truth. What’s it really like at the front? What images can James bring back that will take the President to the very front lines of battle?

James brings these images, sketches of dying men, of front lines, of heroic deeds. And Lincoln learns. So when the President sends the artist to the entrenchment outside one particular stalemate zone, James does all he can to get at the truth his President and friends craves so badly to know. James meets and follows the training of a platoon of black soldiers, gifted and courageous men who still are spat upon by many even in the Union Army. He becomes privy the Union’s plans to dig a trench below the enemy’s stronghold and blow it to smithereens. More importantly, he is clued in on the personality battles and power struggles among the officers in his own army which ultimately turns the ingenious plan for victory into a murderous fiasco. And he takes all this information back to President Lincoln.

This story reminded me much of books in the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, as the grit of battle and the smells of the front lines come alive for the reader. It was definitely an enjoyable read, though I feel such anguish for those who were blamed for the loss of so many lives, simply because they remained faithful to the chain of command. How the doling out of responsibility based on such a system can become so skewed!

I truly enjoyed this book and I will definitely keep my eyes open of other Gingrich novels. How men of such responsibility can find time to write (perhaps it’s during his retirement years?) is beyond me.

©2019 E.T.