Grant's War: A Novel of the Civil War

Half a century after the Civil War, historian Arthur Kelly, the protagonist of this absorbing first novel, sees Ulysses S. Grant as that conflict's central figure. Emerging from self-imposed obscurity, the general vitalized a grid-locked Union war effort and defeated Robert E. Lee, one of history's great captains. Seeking to understand just how the unpretentious, unassuming Grant determined the course of history, Kelly questions survivors of the war. On front porches, in veterans' homes, in taverns and in railway coaches, he taps the old men's memories. The result is an original, intriguing approach to a subject often reduced to cliche. Jones vividly reconstructs the horror of battlefields dominated by the Minie ball--an ounce of soft lead that inflicted unimaginable wounds. Descriptions of Cold Harbor, the Bloody Angle and the Petersburg Crater convey the costs of war, while other fictional veterans' accounts provide an interpretive analysis of the Civil War that stands comparison with the most respected modern scholarship. Through Kelly, Jones puts slavery squarely at the center of the national tragedy, and he presents the depth of commitment on both sides that made the Civil War a total war--a war ending only when the Union's moral and material powers were harnessed by Grant. Jones merits particular recognition for his unusually successful balancing of history and fiction within a relatively modest compass. (Apr.)