Unto This Hour

I was given this book by my lovely sister who picked it up for a song at a local book store. I'm a big Civil War buff & have read hundreds of books over the years. Novels are another story. Other than the Killer Angels & some of Jeff Shaara's work - it's a genre I wasn't overly interested in. Boy, was I wrong! This novel vividly describes in detail the fighting in & around Second Manassas & was a joy to read for hours on end. The author interweaves the characters flawlessly & sometimes you're not sure who the REAL ones are! One of those novels you're truly disappointed when you turn to the final page! How I missed out on this book for so long & the little fanfare it's been given, I cannot understand. Tom Wicker excels here!

I first read Unto this Hour when it was new and just for giggles picked it up and read it again over the past few evenings. It was such a different presentation of the usual dry civil war tomes, heartbreaking and eerie, I can't understand why this isn't more well known. The panoply of soldiers, from the downright strange Stonewall Jackson, to the infantryman in the front lines of both armies, still make the statement that war is no respector of life or dignity. You can feel the hot, humid air and almost smell the gunpowder while your heart is torn for all involved. If you read anything about the civil war other than GWTW, please read this. Highly recommended.

I own many non fiction publications on this war, from the full 4 volume set of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, written in 1880 by the Generals and leaders who participated in the War of Northern Agression, to the fictional Shaara novel The Killer Angels.None of my other publications literally made me feel as though I not only was an eagle watching over the battle;but also, in the trenches behind the un finished railroad atop Sudley Mountian. Selfishly, I would like to see a new printing of this novel.

This novel saw the light in the 80's, and any such work must necessarily be compared with Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize story, The Killer Angels. This is scarcely fair. Tom Wicker's complex story is far richer in characters and POV, and in many respects more accurately portraying the battle it chronicles.The peculiar thing about Unto This Hour is the degree to which it is dominated by a character who says few words, and whose point of view is never employed. Stonewall Jackson is a dusty, shabby man on a too-small horse, his eyes hidden by a battered cap pulled low. He is always on the edges of this story, and his seemingly random and often apparently haphazard decisions, never explained to subordinates, draw a terrible net around the Federal army sent to confront him.The story is seen through the eyes of many, but a few stand out. Most compelling for me was the Iron Brigade colonel Reverdy Dowd, based loosely on Wisconsin's Rufus Dawes. His baptism of fire at Brawner's Farm and his rapid maturation as a commander -- this happens a lot! -- appealed to me as a combat veteran. He lets us glimpse how terrible battle is when your information and insights are limited, and gives us the viewpoint of a natural soldier learning his trade.I also enjoyed the fictional "Sertorius," a British former officer detailed as a correspondent to observe the war. His contempt for both sides in this conflict, and his dismissal of Jackson, contrast with delightful irony when his soldier's eye suddenly perceives that apparently random and rash actions are part of a plan he never glimpsed until the trap was sprung.There are others -- most disappointing, the dashing cavalry aide Fargo Hart, but including the tragedy of the professional soldier Hoke Arnall, probably based on Dorsey Pender; the rough Corporal Gilmore and his passion for a youthful poet; a group of rowdy Confederate messmates caught in a terrible struggle; the bombastic John Pope, caught in his own illusions; the duplicitous McClellan; the furious, competently driven engineer Herman Haupt; the staff colonel with aching teeth; and a host of supporting characters and vignettes.Like southern authors from Faulkner to Conroy, Wicker cannot resist a glimpse of the ignorant and hapless small farmer and his ramshacle family and resentful slaves. What is it about writers from the south?But the most haunting image, counterbalancing the presence of the taciturn Jackson, is a soldier with a traumatic head wound, walking around the battlefield in undead oblivion and functioning with eerie, mindless habit. Both Jackson and the soldier are silent, and we wonder if each is responding automatically to the horrors of combat -- one grimly manipulating its flow based on some innate art, the other drifting with it in numb oblivion. I've done a little of both in my time of service.

I had never before read historical fiction, as I usually stick to factual accounts of the Civil War, but this was a great book. It was historically accurate in the events surrounding the Battle of 2nd Manassas, and Tom Wicker does an excellent job intertwining fictional characters with real historic figures. The cast ranges from slaves to generals, reporters and soldiers, and civilians caught in the middle. I particularly liked the portrayal of the general's wife at home alone, scared, and ill-prepared to deal with being master of other human beings and the risks inherent therin. I read it straight through and wanted more. Well worth the read.