REVIEW : Carr’s storytelling skills bring Civil War home to Arkansas
Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Death of a Confederate Colonel: Civil War Stories and a Novella, by Pat Carr, The University of Arkansas Press, 176 pages, $ 14. 95. Fans of Pat Carr’s short historical fiction are in for another treat.
The adopted Arkansan who lives in Washington County southeast of Elkins has produced another memorable volume of tales. This time Carr mines the rich, but relatively untapped vein of the Civil War home front in Arkansas. Devotees of Civil War fiction can find a wealth of material dealing with generals, soldiers, battles and campaigns. Seldom covered are those left behind to carry on while the menfolk traipse off to distant fields. The war was brutal on all accounts across the South and keeping home and hearth together frequently presented as much of a challenge as soldiering. Carr’s eight short stories and novella are satisfyingly rich in historical detail, yet unencumbered by unnecessary minutiae of the period. In other words, the reader does not need to be proficient in Arkansas history for the stories to be compelling.
Universal in their experiences, the stories could be set almost anywhere in the South. That Arkansas place names, geography and historical figures sprinkled throughout is a literary lagniappe for the cognoscenti, but not an impediment for other readers.
Carr’s consummate skill is exhaustive historical research. She takes no shortcuts.
That ability is evident in her novel, If We Must Die, (a finalist for the PEN / Faulkner Award ) and her more than 100 published short stories. This collection is equally well-researched.
Civil War enthusiasts should find no false notes in The Death of a Confederate Colonel. Carr’s gift of skillfully and seamlessly weaving memorable characters within a historic framework allows the reader to concentrate on the tale.
It’s Carr’s exhaustive research that enables the reader to enjoy her understated prose and mastery of the subtle descriptive phrase that inspires the imagination.
The opening of “Diary of a Union Soldier” will illustrate “Dead branches were scraping so resolutely across the roof that it was only when the wind slackened that the thud of the cannons echoed up from the grove.” Good stuff.
It’s Dec. 7, 1862, and the Battle of Prairie Grove near Fayetteville is raging.
The tales in The Death of a Confederate Colonel are all told from a female perspective. The protagonists range from young to old, dirt poor to relatively well-off. Here’s an overview of the stories. “Diary of a Union Soldier” finds a lone Southern woman caring for a dreadfully wounded Union soldier. Among his effects is a diary that brings the woman closer to him as he struggles for life. “Slave Quarters” deals with the tender relationship between a plantation mistress and a seriously ill slave child. Her humanity is not shared by all.
“Waiting for Gideon Prince” is my favorite of the short stories. It’s a tale of perseverance in the face of the greed and opportunism that consumed many in the war’s troubled times. “The Death of a Confederate Colonel” captures the joy of simply being alive after a horrific battle — even if you’ve had a limb amputated. But the times were grim and that joy frequently turned to tragedy. “The Mistress” has forbidden passion in an aging heart. Or maybe it’s just the longing for a human touch. “The Return” is written in diary form and deals with the war’s waning months. Some on the home front have kept their romantic antebellum notions alive throughout the war’s brutality. It’s easy to do that in a diary until the maimed reminder of bygone days returns from the battle.
“The Confederate Wife” is perhaps the most personal and heart-wrenching of all the short stories. It relates the vagaries of fate that awaited many left behind as they struggled to survive while their men were off at war. “Bringing Travis Home” deals with the grim detritus of war — bodies stacked like cordwood, the stoic resolve of family to do their duty, the cynical callousness of those who’ve seen too much. “Leaving Gilead” is the collection’s novella and is told from the perspective of an 8-year-old girl who had to flee from a plantation overrun by the war. Most touching in the piece is the relationship between the girl, her mother and their surprisingly resourceful slave / coachman.
Masterfully told with adventures, close calls and suspense, the story is replete with memorable characters and makes the reader yearn to know what happened next.
The tales in The Death of a Confederate Colonel were previously published in a variety of outlets including Southern Magazine and The Rio Grande Review. Taken as a whole, the stories give the reader an engaging new perspective on what would seem to be familiar ground.
Carr will be one of the featured authors at the Arkansas Literary Festival, which starts Thursday and ends April 22. Her hour-long session is scheduled for 2: 30 p.m. April 22 at the Ottenheimer Theater of the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock.
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