Finished Tu 5/22/18
I ordered this one from Amazon after reading, GOING NATIVE, a trade paperback in my collection. I also got 'M 31' by Stephen Wright- that one is about a cult of UFO enthusiasts, and I can't wait to read it.
Wright's writing style is long, long paragraphs with one over-the-top description after another. It's an acquired taste (and I usually don't like 'dense' writing), but Wright makes it work.
This is the story of Liberty Fish who lives in upper New York state at the time of the American Civil War. Roxanna and Thatcher are his parents and Aunt Aroline lives there, and Uncle Potter is a frequent guest.
The chapter where Uncle Potter travels to the Kansas/ Missouri border to fight on the side of the Abolutionists- graphic violence!
The first chapter got me hooked immediately. It paints the picture of a group of bearded men dancing in the rain wearing dresses. They are in front of a house that they are ransacking. A young black woman runs from the house and the group of men rape her. It's less than a half dozen pages, but leaves a hell of an impression.
The Fish house near Albany and Saratoga, NY. is the last stop on the Underground Railroad. Liberty is used to people appearing and disappearing at random times as a young boy. There are lots of hidden staircases and secret passages, and the appearances are almost hallucinatory, but Liberty just accepts it.
Roxanna grew up on a large plantation in North Carolina, but left because of her hatred for slavery. A lot of the action takes place in the South.
Liberty joins the Army of The North, but after taking part in several battles, he walks away from the war to visit his mother's home in North Carolina.
Just like GOING NATIVE, each chapter can almost be read as a distinct and separate short story.
I loved a section about a trip that Liberty and Thatcher take on the Erie Canal. As they head west, they witness a primitive dentist pulling a man's tooth. This is treated as a spectacle or show.
There is quite a lot of racism on the Union side. The south was not the seat of all racial hatred- it existed almost just as much in the north. Many felt that if you are truly free, you can hate who you want with the blessing of the federal government. Trump's 'Deplorables' have no trouble with this point of view today.
Last lines of the book-
"The he remembered. It's America, he thought, and you, whoever you are, will be all right. It's America, and everything was going to be fine. "
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