Not a bad civil war yarn ( )

outstanding! --text & narrator

Devil’s Dream, by Madison Smart Bell:


Nathan Bedford Forrest: Firstest with the Mostest

This book has a couple, no, three things going for it. It’s about Nathan Bedford Forrest, a fascinating character, it has elements of magic realism sprinkled throughout, a thing today’s reader seems to favor, and it was done by Madison Smartt Bell, who knows how to write. It can’t have been an easy thing to take up with a notoriously cold-hearted slave-dealing confederate hellion, not mention a founding father of the Klu Klux Klan, and turn him into a likeable fellow, but Bell pulls it off with his usual grace and style. This was the first book I’ve read where I wanted the confederates to win.
Mr. Bell is not afraid to go out on a limb. He eschews the beloved story arc, where things start out fine and cozy for the protagonist, then get increasingly sticky as the book progresses, until it seems there’s no friggin’ way they can get right again. Then they do. This isn’t that kind of book. If you need that kind of thing there are plenty of people who can supply it. No, along with our traditional sense of morality, Bell is set on destroying the space-time continuum. Perhaps only the thin membrane of our collective hypnotic state restricts us to perceiving events in a linear fashion, but see, everything depends on something else, that happened earlier, maybe. So don’t be in a hurry to judge. Certainly, real persons and real events are not that easy to pigeonhole, and it is perfectly fitting that the kaleidoscopic events of Forrest’s life be presented in a way that cushions the hammer of our judgment.
The book jumps around, and you have just no idea where or when you’ll be next. Good, because many are familiar with the details of Forrest’s incredible life. By shuffling the deck, Bell creates an unfamiliar timeline that you have to keep after, if just to see what he’s going to lay down next.
Rather than try to sit inside the hero’s head, Bell creates a sidekick to tell his story, a somewhat tired literary device, except that this sidekick claims to be the son of Toussaint Louverture, a black revolutionary. The sidekick, Henri, is from Haiti, and wants to kill all the white people. Inexplicably, he’s fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Bell does not fear incongruity, either.
The author is more mystic than moral accountant, bless him, so the sins of Bedford Forrest (no doubt there are more than we would care to know,) are dished out evenhandedly, along with all the heroism, tactical sense, and just plain savvy.
This book succeeds on all levels. When you tire of considering the mysteries of Forrest’s life, you can consider the mysterious techniques Bell used to write about him. And why.

Charlie White ( )