The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War

Daniel Aaron, in The Unwritten War, lamented that the Civil War never produced a great work of fiction until, possibly, William Faulkner's works. If anyone ever updates that book, the author may come to a happier conclusion with the works of Howard Bahr. Lost in the clamor over Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Bahr's novel of the Battle of Franklin, The Black Flower--published the same year as Frazier's fine book--was a taut, beautiful tale that I have recommended to readers for years as the best Civil War novel I know. The excellent follow-up book, The Year of Jubilo, carried the story of Yalobusha County's Confederate sons forward to Reconstruction. Now comes The Judas Field, proving that Bahr is not just our greatest Civil War novelist, but one of our greatest modern novelists, period. Others describe the particulars of the story below, so there is no need for me to do that here. Suffice it to say that with this book, Bahr's fictional world, stretching from Mississippi to the cotton gin at Franklin, is beginning to resemble Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha. This body of work deserves ten stars.

Magnificent! Mr. Bahr has written a wonderful, poignant, personal view of how the brutality of the Civil War affected those that lived it. War is the ultimate of human endeavors; those who have been embraced by it are changed forever. Brutality on a grand scale that brings into question the essence of the human condition. Mr. Bahr reaches into the very soul of those who have witnessed the carnage and examines how their lives are changed forever. His character development was superb. His use of the pervasive darkness of that era was stunning in its portrayal. Men fought and died not for their nation but for their beliefs in their fellow comrades. Mr. Bahr is a genius at putting into words the timeless love of men and women who lived those desperate hours. War is terrible but man's belief in himself and those who he fights beside transcends the violence of the battlefield. I highly recommend this classic novel for anyone who wants to briefly glimpse what it is like to taste, hear, smell, and feel the horrors of the battlefield. No gratuitous violence, although the graphic nature of battle is portrayed in all its ugliness. Mr. Bahr's trilogy of the civil war is the best I have ever read on how those that lived it, dealt with its horrors. He is a master at showing how the glories of the battlefield scared an entire generation for years after the guns went silent. A must read.

I have been a Howard Bahr fan since THE BLACK FLOWER, and now he has in this third novel written a fine portrayal of the burden of the Civil War on those who fought it and the ones who waited. Bahr is a master of description and his prose is poetic in its imagery. Anyone who thinks that war is noble must read Cass Wakefield's ever-present memories of the Battle of Franklin--his comrades who were blown to bits, the bloody ground, the maimed corpses, the futile stand by an army ill-equipped, starving, and threadbare. It was Franklin, Tennessee, but it could be Iraq. The reader should make a trip to the site of the battle and walk among the headstones in the little cemetery. There are ghosts there.

I had read Howard Bahr's "Black Flower" and "Year of Jubilo" and liked both. "The Judas Field", however is a literary leap. This is the story of Cass and Lucian Wakefield and their return to the site of the Battle of Franklin Tennessee twenty years after the fact to recover the remains of a friend's brother and father. Along the way Mr. Bahr tells the story of this and other engagements and the fate of several characters. He writes beautifully, and his descriptions of the horrors of war are gripping. Most of all, his treatment of the spirits of the dead sets this work apart from other great Civil War novels. "Killer Angels" and "Cold Mountain" are two that come to mind. His manner of moving forward and backward in time is so smooth and seamless, you are sometimes not sure whether you are witnessing an event during the war or twenty years later. In the same way, there are time you are not quite sure whether the characters are living or the ghosts of those who died in the battles. I hope to see this title among the nominees for the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award or both.

Not a necessarily a civil war buff, I had to be encouraged to read this book on its literary merit versus content. As a result,an absolutely beautifully written novel was discovered. The horrors and atrocities of the Civil War are well done but not necessarily for shock value. Bahr's character development and ability to portray the postwar southern landscape are superb. The last 100 pages have to be one of the best pieces of southern fiction - or any fiction - written in recent years. Lamar Nesbit, Jackson, MS