Love and War

Love and War is the second volume of John Jakes's Civil War trilogy. It picks up where the first, North and South, left off, in the early days of the Civil War. Despite the outbreak of hostilities that has left them on opposing sides, the Pennsylvania Hazards and the South Carolina Mains are determined to maintain their friendship, which now spans two generations.

The book begins rather slowly, with significant rehashing of events from North and South. (This made more sense to me after I learned that the two books were originally published three years apart.) Quickly, though, two things became apparent to me.

1) Jakes is not interested in writing another "traditional" Civil War book. There are actually very few battles in the entire 1100+ pages. Jakes explains his approach and rationale beautifully in an afterward where he outlines the lengths he went to to place his characters in some of the lesser covered but equally important venues, from bureaucratic offices in Richmond and Washington, to Liverpool and the Hunley.

2) Jakes has mastered the perspective switch. Over the course of 147 chapters, rarely do consecutive chapters tell the same character's story. The effect is to keep the story moving quickly but also, perhaps oddly, to prevent the reader from becoming too emotionally invested in any particular individual. And what individuals they are, the heroes and the villains (of whom there are plenty) alike.

Instead of focusing on individual angst and suffering, the impact of Jakes's approach is to make the reader feel the extent of the national angst and suffering, the collective injuries borne by both north and south, along with the uncertainty that so dominated the mood on both sides. It's this generalized uncertainly that lends the dimension so often missing from other Civil War fiction from I Shall Be Near You to Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker.