cover image Another Hill

Another Hill

Milton Wolff, Wolff. University of Illinois Press, $29.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-252-02091-9

Gritty realism and an eye for political complexity mark this interesting first novel by Wolff, who was the last commander of the Lincoln Brigade, comprised of American volunteers, mostly Communists, who fought Franco's fascist troops in the Spanish Civil War from 1937 to 1939. Mitch Castle, Wolff's alter ego, arrives in Spain a callow 21-year-old former errand boy from Brooklyn. On his way up from water carrier to machine gunner to commander, Mitch finds the war to be both a crucible forging his manhood and a testing ground for his political convictions. Counterpoint is provided by Leo Rogin, a reluctant, fear-stricken U.S. volunteer who deserts repeatedly, has an affair with a Spanish woman, impersonates her husband (believed dead or taken prisoner) and roams the war-torn countryside. Sprinkled with glimpses of such real-life figures as Ernest Hemingway, freedom-fighter Dolores Ibarruri Gomez (``La Pasionaria'') and New Masses reporter Joe North, the muscular narrative provides valuable testimony of what it was like to fight Spain's rebel Nationalist troops, who enjoyed vastly superior weaponery and manpower supplied by Hitler and Mussolini, while the Western democracies passively looked on. (Sept.)