Purgatory

Mann’s love story between a Confederate soldier and a Yankee POW illuminates the daily horrors of war but doesn’t quite hang together as a novel. In 1865, the rules governing behavior have broken down in Ian Campbell’s unit. His uncle and commanding officer, Sarge, no longer transfers POWs to prison. Instead he brutalizes them to death. Ian already lost one lover to Sarge’s sadism, and shortly after he’s charged with keeping new captive Drew Conrad just alive enough to torture, the two men forge an intimate connection. The scholarly Southerner vows and schemes to save the Yankee farmboy. Mann effectively weaves into his narrative the hunger, lice, battle scars, and hardening of men who live through war, and the captive/captor relationship offers nuance and complexity. Unfortunately, Sarge’s wild hatred of Northerners is depicted in gratuitous scenes of terrible violence, and Mann’s reliance on biblical homophobia turns a truism into a trope. (Mar.)