Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Reviews

“Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign” by Larry Peterson

By 1 Comment

I’ve completed for reading and research for my Civil War novel, tentatively entitled Brookhaven. It’s been something of a relief to see the conclusion of this phase of the project, and I’ll have more to say about the next phase soon.

The Civil War is something of a publishing mini-industry; new books are coming out all the time. I think we keep examining the war, what left up to it, and what came afterward to try to understand our own times. I can say that much of what I thought I knew has undergone some serious revision.

I’m still following news of new articles and books on the conflict, and one was recently published that I couldn’t resist. Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign: The Eighteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation was written by Larry Peterson and published recently by the University of Tennessee Press. And I couldn’t resist it because it was precisely the operation that framed the Civil War experience of my ancestors. 

They didn’t live in Vicksburg; they lived south of Jackson near the city of Brookhaven. If you travel on Interstate 55 between New Orleans and St. Louis, which I have many, many times, you travel through Brookhaven. 

Vicksburg was the last impediment to Union control of the Mississippi River. New Orleans had fallen in 1862, and Baton Rouge and Memphis not long after. Vicksburg was the blockade point, and it had to be taken. The siege lasted a considerable period, and it involved a number of related operations, including the capture of the state capital at Jackson and what it known as Grierson’s Raid, a cavalry maneuver that started in Tennessee, swept down the state of Mississippi, and end in Baton Rouge. It was designed to confuse and distract the Confederate Army and allow Ulysses Grant to move his troops across the river south of Vicksburg. And it worked rather spectacularly. 

Grierson’s Raid is one of the 18 critical decisions of the Vicksburg campaign. 

With each decision, Peterson explains what the situation was, what the options were, what was decided, and what were the results or impact. The decisions range from the appointment of the military commanders on both sides, failures of command, Grant’s attempted advance through central Mississippi, Union Admiral David Porter’s decision to run the Vicksburg blockade, Grant’s attack on Jackson, the Confederate mismanagement of Vicksburg’s defense, and more. The discussion for each is short and succinct; the main part of the book is only 100 pages.

Admiral Porter’s ships run the blockade.

The appendices are also well worth reading and constitute another 84 pages, including directions for a driving tour you can take of the entire campaign; he Union and Confederate Orders of Battle; and a short discussion about reinforcing Vicksburg. The book also includes notes, a bibliography, and an index.

What I found especially interesting was that Grierson’s Raid almost didn’t happen. The Union officer takseed with the decision initially postponed it because of Confederate activity and because he thought its success was questionable at best. He was eventually overridden, and the raid was authorized, taking place between April 17 and May 2. One stop made by the Union cavalry was Brookhaven, where the rail station was burned and track torn up. 

In my novel, that becomes the event that frames all of what follows.

Peterson retired from United Airlines as a Boeing 757/767 Standards Captain. He’s previously published Confederate Commander: The Remarkable Life of Brigadier General Alfred Jefferson Vaughn Jr and several volumed in the Command Decisions of the American Civil War series. 

Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign covers an extensive amount of information, and it does so in a highly readable, compact way. You get a full sense of the major decisions, good and bad, that figured in the Union’s ultimate capture of the city. 

Top photograph: Vicksburg during the Union siege, showing the caves where many citizens lived during the bombardment.

“Works of Mercy” and Poet Robert Southwell

By Leave a Comment

On Monday, I posted a short review of the novel Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas on my Faith, Fiction, Friends blog. It is a fine novel, a little slow moving at the beginning but richly rewarding if you stick with it. I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.

The main character, an aging housekeeper named Kirsty Sain, works for the priest in a small-town Catholic parish in North Carolina. She lives a somewhat isolated life, until circumstances force a change. But what threads through the change is the poetry of Robert Southwell (1561-1595).

Southwell, who would become a Catholic saint, was one of the Catholic martyrs in the religious wars in England in the 16th century. Yes, but was the age of Shakespeare, but it was also the age of religious war. Henry VIII began the English Reformation; his son and heir carried it onward for the few years he was king. Catholic Mary Tudor represented the reaction, and she was no slouch when it came to martyring Protestants.

When Elizabeth I ascended the throne, it was the reaction to the reaction. That Catholic Philip II of Spain attempted an invasion of England in 1588 to depose Elizabeth and restore the Catholic faith didn’t cause Elizabeth to look on her Catholic subjects kindly. But when it came to martyrdoms, she was a bit more reserved than her older sister.

English-born Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest who had been educated in France. When he returned to his native England in 1586, he did so in secret and had to perform his priestly offices underground. He was captured in 1592, interrogated and tortured, confined to solitary confinement in the Tower fort wo years, and then transferred to Newgate Prison for his trial in 1595. He was found guilty, sentenced to death by hanging, drawn, and quartered. In 1970, Pope Paul VI canonized him.

The vast majority of his writings and poetry happened in the six years between his return to England and his imprisonment. Earlier works were composed in Latin, but his poems in England were written in English. 

In Works of Mercy, Kristy Sain, raised a Catholic, recalls her college studies, readings, and the affair with her atheist tutor, who disparaged her interest in Southwell and Catholicism. She doesn’t finish her studies, and only years later do Southwell’s poems come back to her.

Because a significant part of the story happens at Christmas, the poem that becomes a part of the story is “The Burning Babe,” which is about the Nativity. In fact, it appears that author Thomas found the novel’s title in this poem.

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
   So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood.’
   With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
   And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

It’s easy – too easy – to call Works of Mercy a “Catholic novel.” It certainly reflects a Catholic sensibility; the story is centered on a Catholic church, a Catholic housekeeper, a priest, and a number of parishioners. Yet the themes of the novel, the ideas of serving and faith, extend well beyond “Catholic fiction” and even “religious fiction.”

Intrigued by the poems, I found quite a few books on Amazon about Southwell and his poetry. The one I ended up with was simply titled Works of Robert Southwell. It includes seven of his best-known poems, including “The Burning Babe.” He’s a poet well worth knowing and reading about; his is the story of maintaining faith in a perilous place at a perilous time.

“The Storied Life” by Jared Wilson

By Leave a Comment

I’ve had many conversations with Christian writers about the idea of “calling,” that writing is a calling from God. Most will agree; some even will identify a specific time when they experienced the calling. 

I can’t. Writing has been a part of my life since I can remember. I was raised in a culturally Christian home, but I had been writing for almost 12 years by the time I became a Christian. I wrote my first story when I was 10; I don’t remember much about it except it was a mystery, involved a group of kids, and featured a grandfather clock that opened to a secret passage and a cave.

Jared Wilson has had a far different experience. In The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship, he develops the idea of writing as a specific calling (a kind of ministry, for those unfamiliar with “calling”) and goes so far as the suggest a theology of writing. He tells a good story, and he’s created a solid case for writing as one of those endeavors God would see as good.

The Storied Life is divided into two parts. First, Wilson provides reflections on story. What makes writing good? Does writing have its own liturgy? (Wilson would say yes.) And then he explores writing as a spiritual act.

Part Two is how Wilson explains cultivating the spiritual life. This moves the narrative into areas more familiar to all writers – finding your voice, excellence, the promise and perils of platform, and writing as a calling. Yet even here, he retains a Christian perspective. Writing can be a vocation or an avocation (for me, it’s been both). He explains there isn’t just one kind of calling to writing; the calling can be a call to grow, to emphasize, to recognize limitations, and even to worship.

Wilson suggests that, like the characters we create in fiction, we, too, are characters in God’s story. And just like our fictional characters seem to have a mind of their own (which I’ve experienced many times in fiction), so, too, do we. The calling to be characters in God’s story, and the call to write, is “a call to be his,” he says.

Jared Wilson

Wilson is an assistant professor of Pastoral Ministry and author in residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. He also serves as staff pastor for preaching and director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church, also in Kansas City. He received a B.A. degree in English from Middle Tennessee State University and an M.A. degree in ministry service at Spurgeon College. He’s currently enrolled in the D.Min. degree program at Midwestern. 

The Storied Life is written for Christian writers. Others can read it and benefit, but it is aimed squarely at those of us among the Christian community who are called to write. Wilson offers his own experience, encouragement, and deep insights into the writing process. Christian writers need a book precisely like this one.

Top photograph by Etienne Girardet via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“A Shining” by Jon Fosse: It Does Have Punctuation, Which Helps 

By Leave a Comment

In 2023, Norwegian author Jon Fosse received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He’s a novelist, playwright, essayist, and author of children’s books; in fact, he’s likely better known for his theater plays than his novels. 

When I read about the Nobel, I checked Amazon to see what of his works might be available in English. At the time, there wasn’t much; the situation now is considerably different. There was a short story available in translation, A Shining, translated by Damion Searls. 

A Shining is a short story, longish as in – coming in at 43 pages in the e-book version. It tells the story of man who drives from him home with no destination in mind. He simply keeps driving until his car gets stuck in a narrow forest road. After debating what to do, he decides to try to find help in the forest.

The man moves through a series of dreamlike sequences; the shining of the title happens two or three times, when some kind of shining presence is watching him, then walking with him. He also sees his own parents. By the end, he’s in the presence of his parents and the shining presence, still walking through the forest, barefoot. (And it’s cold and snowy; he shivers from the cold several times and wishes he’d stayed in his car.)

The entire story is a metaphor for death; he never says his parents predeceased him, but they’re barefoot, too. The presence is something of a God-like guide, not directing toward any particular end or goal but just being there.

Jon Fosse

It’s an unusual story. It’s also a 43-page story with one paragraph. While the indent feature on his keyboard might have been broken, the effect of a single paragraph is essentially to compel the reader to keep reading; there’s no good place to stop or even pause. The story does have punctuation (another Nobel Prizewinner, William Faulkner, could often be bad about that), and punctuation helps.

The story is rather haunting. It builds a sense of frustration; how long is this guy going to continue to wander in the dark and not find help? The help does come, of course, but it’s not what the reader’s expecting. It’s a story about death, but it’s also a story about faith. The story may have been influenced by his own childhood when he suffered a serious accident and came close to death. He speaks of seeing “a shimmering presence.” He was raised in the Quaker and Pietest traditions, and he’s now a practicing Catholic.

His Nobel lecture is entitled “A Silent Language.” It’s available to watch on YouTube (he’s introduced in English but his lecture is Norwegian) and it can be read in English here.

Top photograph by Casey Horner via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Literary and Other Kinds of Fiction

By Leave a Comment

Wiseblood Books, which leans in the direction of being a Catholic publisher, has been issuing a series of novels and poetry collections that that interesting, thought-provoking, and broader than the idea of “Catholic publisher” might imply. Its novelists and poets include Dana Gioia, Marly Youmans, James Matthew Wilson, Samuel Hazo, Charles Hughes, Katy Carl, Sally Thomas, Glenn Arbery, R.R. Reno, and others.

What these writers have in common is that they write perceptively and unapologetically about faith, although it’s usually not that obvious. The fiction is serious, literary fiction; the poetry is just as serious, and just as literary. Both compare favorably to anything produced by mainstream, “secular” publishers. Wiseblood’s books aren’t out to score political points and tick the boxes of the latest social and cultural mania to seize the imaginations of what passes for America’s literary elites. 

Instead, they tell stories. They wrestle with what people wrestle with, including holding on to faith in a world growing more indifferent and more hostile.

I was reminded of this when I read a Wiseblood monograph, Christopher Beha: Novelist in a Postsecular World by Katy Carl. I’ve heard of Beha, a writer and novelist who served as editor of Harper’s Magazine from 2019 to 2023. He stepped down from the position for the best of reasons; he couldn’t balance his editorial duties with his writing.

Carl’s 32-page monograph explores Beha’s novels – The Whole Five Feet (2010), What Happened to Sophie Wilder(2012), Arts & Entertainments (2014), and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts (2020). And what she finds is that, in what describes as a “postsecular” world, raising the possibility of faith and belief is, well, okay. You can do it in serious fiction, and Beha does it very well, indeed. 

Carl is the editor in chief of Dappled Things Magazine. Her stories and articles have appeared in numerous literary publications, and she previously published the novel As Earth Without Water (2021) and a short story collection, Fragile Objects (2023). She was chosen as Wiseblood Books first writer in residence in 2020, and she is pursuing an MFA degree in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston., whose founding faculty were James Matthew Wilson and Joshua Hren.  

Katy Carl

Her essay on Beha’s novels repeatedly made me think about my own writing, and how I would describe it. I don’t write literary fiction. I can’t say I write “popular” fiction, or mass market fiction, either. When asked, I’ve said “contemporary fiction.” A few people have suggested “alternative history” or even “alternative future history.” More recently, it’s been historical fiction – no doubts about what to call a novel set during the Civil War and 1915. And now a new one is underway, and it’s definitely contemporary fiction. 

It may be a copout of sorts, but, setting labels aside, all authors have to write the story that’s asking to be written, because it’s a story that the author has to tell. 

I’ve gradually learned the importance of trusting my characters and writing like the writer Harvey Stanbrough describes – WITD, or “writing into the dark.” That means writing with no set outline but trusting your characters enough because they know what they’re doing. I learned that lesson with my last novel, Dancing Prince. One character refused to stay in the minor role I planned for him. I finally surrendered and gave him his head, and he took over. 

And it worked.

Related:

Fragile Objects: Short Stories by Katy Carl.

Wiseblood Books monographs.

Top photograph by Aman Upadhyay via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Across Five Aprils” by Irene Hunt

By Leave a Comment

In 1964, author Irene Hunt (1907-2001) published the middle-grade novel Across Five Aprils. It’s the coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Jethro Creighton, the youngest of five brothers and a sister. They live and work with their parents Matt and Emma on a farm in southern Illinois.

This coming-of-age story is set during the Civil War, beginning in 1861. It’s so well done, and such a good story, that it’s no wonder that it was runner-up to the Newberry Medal in 1965 (her second book, Up the Road Slowly, won the medal in 1966). In 212 pages, Hunt manages to tell both the story of the Creighton family and the story of the Civil War itself. 

Told from Jethro’s perspective, we watch what happens when the reports come of the fall of Fort Sumter. The oldest brother has not been heard from in years, having gone to California for the Gold Rush. Two brothers and the cousin who lives with the family join the Union army; Jethro’s favorite brother Bill joins the Confederate army. Jenny’s beau, the schoolteacher Jethro adores, eventually throws his lot in with the Union. 

While it is the story of the war and how his brothers fare, Across Five Aprils is also Jethro’s story and what happens back home. When Jethro is 10, his father suffers a heart attack, and the boy suddenly finds himself of being head of the family. Through Jethro’s eyes, we see the violence that happens in a region of conflicted loyalties, the impact of the war’s news on the family, and how the war meant unexpected struggles on the home front. 

The characters seem like real people. Hunt had a gift for characterization, and even the minor characters come alive on the page. Hunt based the story on the tales and letters of her own grandfather, who experienced the Civil War much as Jethro does in the novel. She also did extensive research in newspaper reports, government documents, histories, biographies, and memoirs.

Irene Hunt

Hunt, a native of Illinois, taught English and French in Illinois schools and later psychology at the University of South Dakota. She returned to Illinois to become director of language arts at a junior high school. Including Across Five Aprils, she published eight novels between 1864 and 1985, and she won several awards for children’s literature. She died on her 98th birthday in 2001.

After 60 years, Across Five Aprils has stood the test of time. It’s a riveting read as we watch, through a boy’s eyes, as the war unfold. The Creighton family will endure heartbreak and tragedy, fear and violence. But it is the family that endures. 

Top photograph: A farmer and two boys cutting hay in Kentucky during the Civil War.