Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #551752 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-04
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 5.40" w x 8.20" l, .95 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Amazon.com
Midway through Howard Bahr's gripping, evocative second novel, Colonel Burduck sums up the Civil War with this rueful conclusion: "Too much had happened, was still happening, and enough remained for generations to wallow in bitterness, making charge and countercharge, revising and accusing and apologizing long after the smoke had drifted away on the wind, and those who had walked through the smoke were dust." The Year of Jubilo, set in Cumberland, Mississippi, in the summer of 1865, is the account of some who passed through that smoke.

A reluctant soldier, Gawain Harper was goaded into joining the Confederate forces in 1862 by the rabid secessionist Judge Rhea, father of the woman Harper loves. After three years of fighting the Union, the former professor of literature is now trudging home defeated and confused, weighed down by the thought that he is "walking through someone else's memory." The South of his past has indeed vanished, and the town Harper returns to is now governed by the victorious (but wary) soldiers of the North and overflowing with vengeful planters, opportunistic spies, and the fear and ingrained attitudes of its vanquished citizens. These characters are larger than life, as only those who live in such a land and time--one of Queen Anne's lace and poisonous snakes, of Victorian manners and the human indignity of slavery--can be. There's "King" Solomon Gault, the ruthless captain of a band of insurrectionists, plotting an attack on the ruling army; Colonel Burduck, the battle-worn commander who captured slave ships off the African coast in his youth and must now maintain order in a region that once supported slavery; Molochi Fish, a grotesque semi-being who lurks on the edges of humanity, scarred by brutality and meting it out in return; and of course Harper, who, spurred on by the meddling but ebullient Harry Stribling, dives back into this mess to create a life and retrieve a love.

Time is as enveloping in The Year of Jubilo as the lingering smoke of war and the sudden downpours that drench Cumberland's burned landscape. Bahr weaves his characters in and out of one another's lives, creating an almost smothering net. Harper notes, "they were spared of death, so must once again pay the tally for living; free, so they were indentured to tomorrow." In a fascinating narrative of epic proportion and intricate detail, Bahr intertwines life, love, loyalty (or the lack thereof), freedom, slavery, and death. --S. Ketchum

From Publishers Weekly
In this sweeping, lyrical tale set in the aftermath of the Civil War, Bahr (The Black Flower) brilliantly depicts vanquished Southerners coming to terms with the ravages of war, while their Northern counterparts go about the grueling and often thankless task of making the country whole again. Shamed by his girlfriend, Morgan Rhea, and her father into signing up with the Confederate army, former Cumberland, Miss., English teacher Gawain Harper is on his way back to the civilian life he abruptly left three years before. Taking up with another returning soldier, Harry Stribling, an enigmatic fellow Southerner who fancies himself a philosopher, 40-year-old Gawain confronts the dispiriting realities of change. The countryside is different, but so are the people, and the horrors of war have altered Gawain as well. Bahr ingeniously explores the many facets of killing: hand-to-hand combat; killing for vengeance; killing for hire; killing in self-defense or out of loyalty to a cause. Most troubling of all is the kind of killing fueled by a perverse righteousness and a lust for power--the kind practiced by renegade Southern leader Solomon Gault, a wealthy smuggler and a force to be reckoned with in Cumberland. Among his other evil deeds, Gault killed Morgan's sister Lily during the war, and so Gawain is drawn against his will into yet another battle, this time on his home turf. It is Gault's final skirmish that brings Southerners and Northerners together, culminating in a confrontation that will haunt Gawain and his loved ones forever. Bahr has crafted an unforgettably powerful and original Civil War story in this incisive account of one man's search for redemption from the sins of fratricidal conflict. 13-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While there may never be another Cold Mountain, Bahr's novel is as close as we're likely to get under current copyright law. It has many of the appealing elements of the earlier book: the Confederate soldier returning home in defeat, the wild adventures, the strong women, and the colorful secondary characters. Pressured into enlisting by the father of his sweetheart, Morgan Rhea, Gawain Harper limps home years later to find his Mississippi hometown occupied by union soldiers yet ravaged by the vigilante violence of "King Solomon" Gault. Harper seeks justice, aided by Harry Stribling, who has an uncanny knack for doing the right thing, and even Old Hundred and Eleven, named for the pattern of tobacco juice stains on his chin. Bahr, who was the curator at William Faulkner's home and museum for many years, also owes a clear debt to Faulkner, both in his prose style and preoccupation with abstract concepts. Narrated by Tom Stechschulte, this Civil War tale is highly recommended. John Hiett, Iowa City P.L.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.