This is a fine, fine novel, and will probably be my favorite fiction for 2013.
Abel Truman is now an old man, a recluse, living in a shack on the beach in Washington State. It is 1899. He fought in the Civil War and the chapters alternate between his present life and a few weeks in May of 1864 when Abel fought in the Wilderness campaign.
This book has everything a good novel should have, and Abel's story is told with tenderness and beauty, in lush and vivid descriptive prose.
1864
"See them on the road....What little dust their bare feet raises curls and licks the road-side grasses, then finally settles after they pass. Two of them, a man and woman, hopeful contraband, walking north along the road. The man's face creased with worry and with pain, hand furrowed with fieldwork, stiffened and rough, He emancipated himself a fortnight ago, and the root-sour stink of fear still rises from the sad folds of his thin shirt."
1899
"Abel had been watching them since dusk and it was getting on late now for an old man to be up and about in the woods in winter. He fisted his hand before his lips and blew warmth into his cold fingers. Every now and again a great nausea would surge through him, hot, salty waves breaking against the back of his throat, and he had to fight to keep from coughing. When he hung his pale hand in the dark before him, it trembled and he could not stop it. Abel sniffed softly and rubbed his prickly, hairless chin. Taking a breath,he softly blew and figured in was November. "
The author lives in Gig Harbor, Washington. This is his first novel.
Annie Dillard writes: "Here is a book in the great tradition of the novel: a vivid world that wraps and holds the reader who can well lose himself in its grandeur."
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