Reviews

“Remembering: A Novel” by Wendell Berry

August 20, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

It’s the mid-1970s. Andy Catlett is in San Francisco, a writer attending a modern agricultural conference. His family in Kentucky is likely relieved that he’s away; Andy had become very difficult to live with.

The reason: some time before, Andy and a few others were helping a neighbor on his farm. Andy was operating machinery, and almost without realizing what had happened, he lost his hand. The quick actions by the other men likely save his life; he could have bled to death.

Andy knows farm accidents happen. Now one has happened to him. He has had to learn to function with his left hand, the stump of his right arm a constant reminder of what happened. The fact is that Andy no longer feels whole; his entire life is at sea. And he doesn’t know how he’s going to make his way home again.

Remembering is the last published novel so far in the Port William noels by Wendell Berry. I say “so far” because Berry has a new one publishing Oct. 7, entitled Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Remembering is the story of man forced to question everything he’s believed in, discovering his own mortality, and ultimately finding redemption. It has all the classic Berry themes: community, the land, the people of the land, family, and faith.

The novel is somewhat autobiographical; Berry, too, worked as an agricultural writer for a time. And he would leave that career when he finally understood the inherent conflict between the agriculture he was raised in and what agriculture had become.

Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist, environmentalist, and social critic. His fiction, both novels and stories, are centered in the area he calls Port William, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. He’s won a rather astounding number of awards, prizes, fellowships, and recognitions. He lives on a farm in Kentucky.

Remembering is the story of a deeply troubled heart and mind, a man trying to find his way, and how healing and redemption ultimately happen.

Wendell Berry and the Land.

My review of Berry’s Jayber Crow.

Wendell Berry and This Day: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry and Terrapin: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry’s Our Only World.

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry.

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry.

A World Lost by Wendell Berry.

A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry.

The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry.

Another Day: Sabbath Poems 2013-2023 by Wendell Berry at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Spare Us Yet: And Other Stories” by Lucas Smith

July 23, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Faith meets reality. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out as you expect it to, or as you think it should.

Growing up in a culture that’s saturated Catholic (like New Orleans was), even we non-Catholics were aware of the impact and reach of the church. Ash Wednesday felt weird when you were one of the few in public school with a clean forehead. You lined up for your polio vaccine (sugar cube style) at the local Catholic school. Most of the weddings and funerals you attended were Catholic, and you typically found more food at funerals than wedding receptions. Almost all your neighborhood friends were Catholic. You took you SAT tests at the Catholic high school. Catholic was familiar; Catholic was normal.

Perhaps this is why I felt completely at home with Spare Us Yet, the collection of short stories by Lucas Smith. To call them Catholic stories would be an act of misdirection. Certainly, they all have the sense of faith, and a few even concerns priests, religious holidays, and observances. But they are not stories of faith as taught in seminary or theology textbooks as they are stories of faith lived out in day-to-day life.

A young priest prepares for Shrove Tuesday. An American tries to give away an Eisenhower dollar in Mexico, discovering that even friends may not be what they seem. People wrestle with getting the COVID vaccine. An expert marksman volunteers to be part of a firing squad chosen by the condemned felon as his method of execution. An omen of death in the form of a washerwoman appears in three visions. In a dystopian future, a man gets in trouble with villagers for teaching children about Jesus, repeating stories as he remembers them (this may be my favorite in the collection, although several are vying for that). A young boy prepares for a swim meet by having the “heat numbers” written on his arm. Priests try to manager worship during lockdown. A mother and her son take a trip to the Outback. A grandson visits his ailing grandparents, who are trying to cover for each other’s memory loss. A letter to the editor serves as an obituary. And more.

Every story in Spare Us Yet is moving; each is worth reading at least twice. The characters are people struggling to make sense of life, struggling to understand what it means to live one’s faith. You know them, you’ve met people like them, and you recognize yourself in them.

Smith is a writer and poet who is from Orange County, California and Australia, where he currently lives. His writing has been published in such literary journals as Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Quadrant, Island, Southerly, and The Rialto. He’s the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bonfire Books in Melbourne, and in 2023 served as writer-in-residence at Wiseblood Books, which led to the writing and publication of Shape Us Yet. He writes The Sprawl of Quality at Substack.

A word about Wiseblood Books. Likely named for Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, it publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I’m most familiar with the poetry, having read some 18 of their collections over the past several years. I’ve also read several of their fiction works. Their authors include Sally Thomas, Kary Carl, Dana Gioia, James Matthew Wilson, Glenn Arbery, Marly Youmans, and many authors. The novel Hold Fast, by Spencer K.M. Brown, was one of my favorite books in all of 2024. They work with literary fiction, serious literary fiction, but it’s also readable literary fiction. I can’t recommend them enough.

An Australian to English Glossary for Spare Us Yet – Luch Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

“Mosby’s Rangers” by James Joseph Williamson

July 9, 2025 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

In my novel Brookhaven, I have the 13-year-old Sam McClure sent to the Confederate army in the East. His father had fought with Robert E. Lee in the Mexican American War, and Lee hoped that the young Sam had learned some of his father’s espionage and survival skills. The young man is assigned to a unit called Colby’s Rangers, and after a few weeks of basic training is sent with others to prepare for Lee’s invasion of the North, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg.

The model for Colby’s Rangers in the novel is an actual unit called Mosby’s Rangers. It was less involved in espionage and more involved in disruptions of federal lines, camps, and supply lines. When General Jeb Stuart “rode around” the Union army of George McClellan in 1862, it was Mosby’s Rangers leading the cavalry.

Beginning in April 1863, James Joseph Williamson was a private who gained what many Confederate soldiers and cavalrymen desired – a spot in Mosby’ Rangers. Some 44 years later in 1909, he published a memoir of his time with the unit, which stretched to the end of the war in 1865. Mosby’s Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Fourth-Third Battalion Virginia Cavalry, From Its Organization to the Surrender is the title. and it was republished as an e-book in 2018. (It’s also available as an audio book.)

Memoirs of the Civil War by soldiers were common in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The Civil War generation was dying out, and much of the story had not been told. Generals had been their memoirs published; Ulysess S. Grant’s memoirs were a bestseller. But now it seemed it was the soldiers and lower officers who were publishing accounts “from the ground level.”

Williamson published two editions in his lifetime; the second corrected errors and added information. He had kept a diary during the war years, and the diary became the basis for the memoir.

It’s a highly readable, interesting, and often thrilling account. John S. Mosby was a Virginian attorney when he joined the Confederate Army. He caught the eye of Jeb Stuart, and he soon became known as one of Stuart’s key men. Mosby’s Rangers operated primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Viriginia, he it’s fair to say they ran circles (literally and figuratively) around Union armies.

He was nicknamed the “Gray Ghost;” his cavalrymen could slip through enemy lines almost like phantoms. One of the most famous of the Rangers’ exploits was in March 1863. In the early morning hours, a group of 30 Rangers led by Mosby discovered a break in Union lines. They traveled several miles to Fairfax County Courthouse and captured Union Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, two captains, 30 soldiers, and nearly 60 horses without a shot being fired to a man lost. And then they made their way back to Confederate lines. The story electrified the South and outraged the North; it also earned Mosby a promotion. After Stuart’s death, Mosby reported directly to Lee.

Williamson was one of the 29 men who accomplished “the impossible raid,” and his account is riveting.

Mosby survived the war, despite a bounty placed on his head by Grant. Impressed by what Mosby had accomplished, Grant would pardon him when he became President. They became friends, and Mosby – to the dismay of his Southern fans – became a Republican and worked to unify the country. His popularity diminished rapidly.

Mosby’s Rangers is a great story, told first-hand by a man who was there and saw it happen.

Top photograph: A group of Mosby’s Rangers, with Mosby in the center.

“Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War” by Sarah Kay Bierle

June 25, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In my research for my novel Brookhaven, it was difficult not to run across references to one particular officer.

John Pelham was an Alabama boy, the third of three sons and born in 1838 in a small wooden house in rural Benton County. His father was a doctor and farmer, enjoying both community respect and economic success. The family’s reputation was such that John’s father was able to get an appointment for his son to the U.S. Military Academy. The young man arrived at West Point in 1856, enrolling in a five-year degree program.

As the rhetoric of the years leading up to the Civil War became increasingly heated, West Point must have become a strange place – outwardly uniform but inwardly affected by the same passions rearing the country apart. John left the academy in 1861, one month shy of graduation. Like other Southerners at West Point, he was being closely watched as secession tore the country apart. He made his way to New York City and then to border-state Kentucky, finally reaching home. Just as he’d been watched by his commanding officers at West Point, he’d also been observed by their Southern counterparts, who were keen to make use of his military training.

For the rest of his short life – he would be mortally wounded aged 24 at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford in 1863 – John Pelham became the stuff of legend. Historian Sarah Kay Bierle has spent years studying in his life, separating fact from myth. The facts of his military prowess didn’t need myth and legend to enhance his reputation. Despite almost all of his letters having disappeared, she’s been able to reconstruct his life and accomplishments from the letters and reports of others as well as official records and reports.

Bierle has succinctly and compellingly summarized it all in Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War.

And what an enthralling story it is.

Pelham proved the utility of the horse artillery. Have horses pull artillery pieces meant they could be moved frequently and strategically during battle. Pelham demonstrated the value – and his own – during the battles of the Peninsular Campaign, First and Second Manassas (Bull Run), Antietam, and Fredericksburg, among several others. He caught the eye of Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and Robert E. Lee. He was promoted to major and then recommended for a promotion to lieutenant colonel, which was pending at the time of his death.

He became known as the “Gallant John Pelham;” it was Lee who described his “glorious courage” (and inspired the title of Bierle’s book). In the years after the war, the legends cropped up around him; it seems every young Southern woman had had a romance with him. (And while it was in a different context, it was Pelham who inspired one aspect of the main character in my novel – how legends get born that often have no basis in fact.)

Bierle is what’s called a public historian, working in the field of Civil War education and battlefield preservation. She’s written articles and essays for numerous publications, including Emerging Civil War, and is a frequent speaker on Civil War topics. Her previous publications include Decisions at Chancellorsville, War in the Western Theater, and Call Out the Cadets: The Battle of New Market, May 15, 1864.

Glorious Courage is a fascinating read. It does what good history should do – separate fact from fable and present a person or event as it should be. In the case of John Pelham, he didn’t need legends to enhance his reputation, and Bierle serves her subject very well indeed.

Related:

Martha Pelham’s Letter: Finding Colorful Details for John Pelham’s 1858 Summer – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Artillery: John Pelham – Artilleryman, Gallant Fool, Splendid Boy – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Podcast: Historian Sarah Kay Bierle on ‘Gallant’ John Pelham – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

Top photograph: One of there three known photo of John Pelham.

The Book on My Father’s Bookshelf

June 11, 2025 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

The book sat on a bookshelf in my parent’s bedroom for as long as I can remember. The shelf itself was a former window, occupied by an air conditioner when they became available in late 1950s New Orleans. When central air became possible, the window was reconfigured as a bookshelf.

The title of the book was The Battle of Liberty Place: the Overthrow of Carpetbag Rule in New Orleans, written by Stuart Omer Landry. It was printed by a local New Orleans publisher, Pelican Publishing, in 1955. This volume was apparently part of a numbered edition, except the number is left blank. If I remember correctly, a friend of my father’s at the publisher gave him a copy as a gift.

The book tells the story of a pitched battle that occurred in 1874, when New Orleans was still occupied by federal troops. On Sept. 14, 1874, some 5,000 armed citizens under the leadership of the Crescent City White League fought with the Metropolitan Police and state militia. The insurgents won the battle and held downtown New Orleans, including the statehouse and the armory, for three days. Federal troops arrived and restored the elected government.

The insurgent army drove the federal forces to take refuge in the Customs House on Canal Street (still in existence today), Eventually, after President Grant sent troops and gunboats, a truce was worked out. The siege ended and the insurgents dispersed with no one arrested.

I had always thought that the battle centered on Canal Street. It did, but it had also spilled over into the business district, including a part of Tchoupitoulas Street a scant half-block from where for some 20 years my father had operated his printing and mailing business on Gravier Street.

This “Battle of Canal Street,” as it has often been called, was the culmination of anger and violence that had started in different parts of the state with the disputed 1872 governor’s election. Both sides had claimed victory; the Democratic candidate likely won but the Republican candidate had the backing of federal troops. Both sides in the election had engaged in fraud and violence; a state panel appointed by the then-governor had declared the Democrat to be the winner.

Carpetbag rule in Louisiana and other places in the former Confederacy ended with the Compromise of 1877, in which Rutherford Hayes (the Republican) became president after the contested election with Samuel Tilden was resolved. In return for the House Democrats to vote for Republican Hayes, all federal troops were withdrawn from the South. And that was the end of Reconstruction, for good and for ill.

*The monument stood on Canal Street until 2017*.

Some years later, a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place was erected on Canal Street near the Customs House; I remember walking by it numerous times. The monument was removed in 2017 in the wave of removal of Confederate monuments all over the southern states.

The account in the book is a rather frank celebration of the actions of the White League. The army, comprised primarily of Confederate veterans of the Civil War, is seen as patriots and defenders of liberty. The federal forces and the local police are treated far less favorably.

The book was a product of its time. The author, Stuart Omer Landry (1884-1966), was also the owner of Pelican Publishing. He had acquired the business in 1927, when it was part of the Pelican Bookstore on Royal Street in the French Quarter and included such patrons as William Faulkner and Sherwood Andrson. Landy also authored several other books, including The Caddo Indians: Their History and Culture, History of the Boston Club, and Dueling in Old New Orleans. Pelican was known for publishing books that advocated white supremacy and segregation, but it also published the first Louisiana Almanac in 1949 as well as other books of local history and culture.

After Landry died in 1966, Pelican was acquired by Hodding Carter, the Pulitzer- Prize-winning journalist. He owned it for three years, when it sold it to two brothers who returned it to its Landry-type orientation. In 2019, it was bought by Arcadia Publishing, eventually combined with River Road Press, and remained focused on more general historical and cultural subjects. (One of its titles in a family favorite: The Cajun Night Before Christmas, now more than 50 years old and sold in just about every souvenir shop in New Orleans.)

The Battle of Liberty Place is an artifact of its time. It’s profusely illustrated and isn’t strictly an anti-Union occupation screed. It includes considerable historical information. The first edition is listed for about $145; a paperback edition is also available for about $30.

I can’t recall my father ever talking about it, except to say the book was a gift. He may have done some general printing work for Mr. Landry, but, if so, that’s lost in time as well. When my mother was moving to an assisted living home in 2013, she told me to take whatever books I might be interested in. I took that on, as well as a few books he purchased about World War II and a biography of P.G.T. Beauregard, by historian T. Harry Williams and published by LSU Press, I had given him as a Christmas gift in 1970.

Top photograph: A drawing of the battle near the Customs House on Canal Street.

“Fred Grant at Vicksburg” by Albert Nofi

June 4, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

When I wrote my historical novel Brookhaven, I was aware of this story, but I didn’t know it in terms of the color and details. Now I do.

In the spring of 1863, Frederick Dent Grant was 12 going on 13. He’d been born in St. Louis. His mother was Julia Dent Grant, daughter of a slaveowner in St. Louis County. His father was Ulysses S. Grant, general in the Union Army, who was now encamped down the Mississippi River, charged with taking Vicksburg, the last Confederate fortification not in Union hands along the Mississippi. Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge were all in Union hands; Vicksburg was the last impediment to Union control of the river.

And then Grant did something that would seem almost inexplicable to parents today. In early March of 1863, he sent for his oldest son Fred to join him for the Vicksburg campaign. Fred’s mother also did something inexplicable – she let him go, although she did keep nine-year-old Ulysses Jr. with her and the family.

Fred Grant was one thrilled boy. He would talk about it, and give speeches on it, for the rest of his life.

Far from being watched, monitored, or babysat by an orderly, Fred had almost free roam the camps and even many of the battles. His father would occasionally try to keep him in a safe place, but Fred usually found a way to experience the excitement. His was with the army for numerous battles around Vicksburg, traveled with the army for the Battle of Jackson, and was there when Vicksburg surrendered. He also came down with a common soldier’s ailment – dysentery – and was eventually sent home to St. Louis to recuperate.

Many of Fred’s speeches still exist, and he wrote down his account of the experience in memoir form. Historian Albert Nofi had assembled many of these sources and edited Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War. Fred’s account in not a series of diary entries but rather the adult son of the Union general looking back on one of the most important engagements of the Civil War. While the Battle of Gettysburg usually gets more attention, the fall of Vicksburg established full Union control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two.

Fred Grant is more than an edited and annotated memoir, however. Nofi provides a succinct and informative introduction and includes several helpful appendices. These are a summary of the Grant and Dent families’ history, short biographies of people and explanations of places mentioned in the text, the order of battle, military terminology, and several other helpful sections that help provide context. The book is also profusely illustrated with photographs, including one of the young Fred Grant at about the time of Vicksburg.

Nofi received his Ph.D. in military history from the City University of New York. He’s written more than 40 books on military history and is a founding member and director of the New York Military Affairs Symposium. He lives in New York City.

Fred Grant is a memoir, yes, but it also provides a window of a boy’s perspective of war, his father who happened to be one of the most important figures of the Civil War, and how we remember the formative events of our lives. I’s a thoroughly enjoyable book.

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