I knew next to nothing about the Western Campaign of the United States Civil War (a long campaign fought east of the Mississippi River over a number of years in Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and North and South Carolina) when I picked up this book, but I'd read and enjoyed the Civil War Trilogy - Gods and Generals, The Killer Angels and The Last Full Measure - written by Jeff Shaara and his father, Michael Shaara, who had penned the middle title, winning a Pulitzer Prize, but unfortunately died before getting to bookend the stories; enter, the son - and some of the younger Shaara's other best-selling novels, too, so I was eager to learn something new.
A Blaze of Glory is the first book in a trilogy focusing on the oft-forgotten - at least in comparison with the struggle closer to the Atlantic Coast, including famous battles at Antietam, Gettysburg and Bull Run/Manassas - Western Campaign, and it introduces basically a new set of characters. Therefore, the first few chapters include a lot of back story, necessary and relevant, before the story really picks up.
Beginning in the Spring of 1862, we are introduced to men like Private Fritz Bauer, a German-American fighting for the North, James Seely, a Confederate cavalryman, and, of course, more well-known names like General Ulysses S. Grand and General William T. Sherman on the Union side, and Southern officers Joe Johnston and Albert Sidney Johnston, as the Confederate Army in the west seems to be on the verge of total capitulation after the loss of Fort Donelson, which forces Johnston to give up Nashville, and withdraw his army to protect the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The urgency conveyed is apparent and obvious. You feel like you're on that desperate march to protect the railway along with so many southern soldiers.
It is all a matter of commanding the railroads. The Union army of Grant - whose victory at Fort Donelson is a career-maker - is in hot pursuit, sensing that one more big win could bring an end to the war in the West, a total Federal victory. Yet, Johnston is aware of Union plans, and bravely decides upon a radical gambit, a surprise attack against Grant's camp in a small southwestern town, whose major feature is a church named Shiloh.
And so begins the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7 1862), which is as bloody and important as any being fought closer to the Atlantic Coast, and one that swings back and forth, momentum changing regularly as more and more men are committed to a brutal fight that will eventually be won by Grant's army, who receive enough reinforcements on the night of April 6 to launch a counter-attack in the morning, after General Pierre Beauregard (as flamboyant a Southern general as there was), in command of the Southern army following the death of General Johnston, decided against attacking the Union army that night. It proved to be their undoing.
Meticulous and bloody detail. That's how Shaara describes the events, from both sides. It's gripping, exciting, horribly tragic, and it really gives you a sense of the horror of a fight that was, to that point in time, the bloodiest in American history.; Gettysburg and Antietam were still to come.
You can almost feel Private Bauer's overwhelming fear (like so many others in Grant's army, Shiloh is his first taste of battle) as he faces a horde of screaming southerners, and the uncertainty of the Confederates after Johnston's death. Few can take battlefield dispatches and letters and form such a riveting narrative like Shaara can. His words seem to back the battle come alive, and he is at much at home describing counter attacks as he is at guiding the reader through the political machinations that seem to dog General Grant throughout the campaign.
It is a compelling read, after a somewhat slow start, but I'd long since forgotten the somewhat tedious - and, somewhat generic - parade ground, training, rough sergeant cycle that Private Bauer endures at the beginning. The thing is, though, that it actually happened. All of this happened. It's enthralling for that reason, and Shaara has done the historical fiction world a service for bringing this to life in an incredibly exciting way.
Once the story really got going, I had trouble putting it down.
Read my review of the second book in this trilogy, A Chain of Thunder, by clicking here.
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