This novel centers around the life of Ulysses Grant, Civil War general and American president. It focuses on his family life, especially his relationship with his father-in-law, wife Julia, and children. I found the dynamics between Grant and his wife Julia's family, who had strong Southern sympathies, to be particularly interesting, especially when an enslave woman who was serving Julia escapes. I do wish the novel had dwelled more on these clear contradictions within Grant and those closest to him, but this book keeps the story moving along. While I wanted more about Julia especially, this novel does make for an interesting read, especially for those interested in the American Civil War. ( )

Engrossing fictional biography of General Ulysses S. Grant, covering his meeting with Julia Dent, a Southern belle, later his wife, the Civil War years, with his part in it, postwar years, including those as president, his part in Reconstruction, and scandals. He was involved, due to his naivety in matters financial and too trusting nature but insisted on paying back every cent of his monstrous debts. To that end, though suffering from throat cancer [from many years of smoking cigars--20 or more a day] he persisted in writing his memoirs, urged on by Julia and by Mark Twain.
I liked that the author covered his personal life with Julia and his family. Brilliant writing style. Very readable. ( )

The General and Julia takes us back and forth in time with Ulysses S. Grant and his beloved wife, touching on the high and low points of his life, featuring the final "Forty Days and Forty Nights" during which he labored through pain and drug-induced disorientation to finish the memoirs he hoped--and Sam Clemens promised--would assure his family's financial future after the General was gone. The prose is never flowery, nor even poetic, and yet Clinch can take my breath away with a simple turn of phrase. Describing the rising KKK, for instance, there's this: "...they are organized the way a hurricane is organized, madly a-spin around a terrible void. That void is hatred, and it draws every weak and broken thing to it." Why has no one ever put it quite so succinctly before? Even in this relatively short and intentionally limited treatment of his life, it is clear that Grant was more than a General, less than a god, human to the core. This is an engaging, poignant portrait of a man whose genius served him well in certain phases of his life, but whose generous nature left him vulnerable to exploitation. Clinch's talent for "raising the dead" (his own words) in historical fiction places him at the top of my list of greatest living American authors. ( )