The Black Flower, by Howard Bahr

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

Howard Bahr

This heart-wrenching novel packs a lot into just three or four days.  With several major characters with stories that fit them uniquely into the event of a battle near Franklin, Tennessee towards the end of the Civil War, you will have a lot to keep your mind and tear ducts involved.  Before I go on, let me reassure you that this is not a melodramatic or maudlin novel, but rather an exquisitely crafted insight into everything that can go into the human soul.

Bushrod Carter, along with his two friends from Cumberland, Mississippi, Jack and Virgil C., await a late evening battle, an odd choice of time for their Confederate commanders to plan.  Before the battle even begins, one of the three is dead, and the other two are fated to be badly wounded in the assault on the Union battle works.  Bushrod and a spinster named Anna are about to come together in the house of her cousin whom she is visiting and which has been commandeered as an army hospital after the bloodiest of battles.  As Anna says, to herself, to God and to Bushrod himself, "I could have loved this boy."  In the meantime others' small dramas are playing out, some affecting the would-be lovers and some not.  You learn about these separate dramas through reminiscences by the characters or their friends: the shy mountain boy who devotes himself to Anna and Bushrod; the music teacher who thinks he is the Archbishop of Canterbury; the child who is touched by a story about a pony; the ne'er-do--well who, having been buried alive by Bushrod and his buddies, understandably but brutally wants to punish the men.; the tragic young Yankee staff officer dreaming of returning to Franklin as he is felled by a sharpshooter.

Bahr indulges himself in lots of foreshadowing, doing things like having Anna halfway through the novel described as  years later refusing to attend the unveiling of a statue of a soldier because it reminds her too much of someone.Fortunately all this hinting is just confusing enough that you can convince yourself you don't really know what's going to happen.  You hope.

The one problem I had with this novel was a bit of sentimental excess where people who fought or lost a loved one on both sides waxes philosophical about what war is all about, and was it worth it?  This did not ring true to me.  I have a hard time believing that in 1865 and years soon thereafter there was much 1960s-like angst about the horrors of war.  Many books written today adopt this anachronistic sentiment, and it just doesn't work all the time.

I read this book as a download from NLS BARD.  It is the October book for Let's Read Historical Novels  at AccessibleWorld.org .

NEXT:  Transgressions, by Erastes