Customer Reviews

Call Each River Jordan

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I've read SHADOWS OF GLORY, FADED COAT OF BLUE, and CALL EACH RIVER JORDAN and Owen Parry is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers.
Although I'm a Civil War buff, I think it's the protagonist's "voice" that does it. The main character is a little Welsh immigrant named Major Abel Jones, a British war veteran and a hero of Bull Run. He's also an investigator for the government. Parry does a wonderful job with this guy's accent. Just one example, "It is a pickle you are in, then?" He does use "But let that bide" a bit much, but you barely notice it after you've read a couple of the books.
CALL EACH RIVER JORDAN centers around the Battle of Shiloh, which Jones becomes enmeshed in as he tries to report to General Grant. Everyone's running away, so Jones takes charge of a few of the more malleable of the scared soldiers and forms them into a unit.
We eventually meet Grant and W.T. Sherman and P.T.G. Beauregard, of whom Jones doesn't think much, and we get to the jist of the matter, which is to find out who's been lynching slaves. The most recent case is the hanging of forty men, women and children at a crossroads.
I always find that the best mysteries are those in which there's some humor to go along with the suspense. Some of that occurs when Jones falls captive to some Confederates on his way to see Beauregard. One of them is a fellow Welsh immigrant, whose accent Jones recognizes as being from a certain village near his. Jones compares the man's accent to his own, which he thinks is devoid of any trace of his former brogue. Jones also hates horses and he's given one named Rascal, that's way too much horse for him.
Parry employs a standard cast of characters: The rogue Molloy, with whom he fought in India, is getting married and isn't in this one, but the moody Doctor Mick Tyrone is shown sawing off arms and legs in the aftermath of battle. Jones and Tyrone are usually in the midst of some philosophical discourse. My favorite is Mrs. Schutzengel, Jones's landlady in Washington. She's a socialist, a devotee of Karl Marx. Jones also has a wife, Mary Myfanwy, whom he dearly loves but rarely sees.
Once again, this is one of those novels where the characters are so great that you just want to look in on them to see what they've been doing lately.

Let me first confess that I've become a big fan of Owen Parry's work, so this review is not unbiased. With that said, however, I think this is the best yet in the Owen Parry series of Civil War mysteries. It is a remarkable, textured, gripping, delightful, suspenseful page-turner of a book.

If you are new to the series, I would recommend that you read the first book first: *Faded Coat of Blue.* Then read the second one, *Shadows of Glory,* before turning to *Call Each River Jordan.* That way I think you'll better come to know and appreciate the main characters. *Faded Coat of Blue* is a wonderful book and a great introduction to the series. *Shadows of Glory* changes the setting and has a mystical, wintry, and scenic air to it. And *Call Each River Jordan* refocuses the reader into the hell of the Civil War and its hatreds and terror. All are vivid, intriguing, and tremendously enjoyable.

Why do I think this is the best yet in the series? In *Call Each River Jordan,* Parry draws us more deeply into battle--this time in the fires of Shiloh--and then he draws us more deeply into the personal bitterness of the war. He shows us scenes in the deep south of 1862 that we've never viewed before and the gruesomeness of that conflict both on and off the battlefield. His descriptions are powerful--we see the flames and smell the smoke. His characters, as in the earlier books in the series, are colorful and believable. I particularly enjoyed getting to know a little better one of the characters we met in *Faded Coat of Blue,* Dr. Mick Tyrone, who provides an interesting counterpoint to the dominant and accurately portrayed religiosity of the era. One point of caution: Most of us are offended by the "N" word today. Good for us. But Parry's characters converse in the language of the 1860s. They would not ring true to life if they didn't. Writing or reading authentic accounts of the Civil War era requires an understanding that it was a far different time in our country's social progress. Beyond that, some of the hellish scenes Parry paints are not for the squeamish.

When I first read *Faded Coat of Blue,* I wondered how the author would be able to sustain in subsequent books in the series the stylishness of that first book, its authenticity, and the terrific mystery of it. He has succeeded wonderfully. The three books in the series so far are all delights, each with a different flavor, but all sustaining the quality of the series, providing remarkable authenticity in describing the historical era and its settings, and developing the characters and story lines beautifully. And they're excellent mysteries, too.

If you enjoy murder mysteries and have even the slightest interest in the Civil War era, read all the books in this series. You might choose to dive right into *Call Each River Jordan,* and if so, I think you'll enjoy it very much. But as I tell my friends and relatives, I think you should start with *Faded Coat of Blue,* then read *Shadows of Glory.* You'll get to *Call Each River Jordan* in due time. And then you'll look forward, as I do, to the fourth book in the series.

In FADED COAT OF BLUE, Owen Parry invented a new fable out of an old American tragedy. In SHADOWS OF GLORY, Parry found his voice, allowing us to share the unconventional Civil War adventures of his intriguing Welsh-immigrant, ex-India Army protagonist, Major Abel Jones of the Union Army. Now in CALL EACH RIVER JORDAN, Owen Parry truly hits his stride.
The story opens with Abel Jones inadvertently caught up in the slaughter of Shiloh. We meet the laconic, unpretentious Grant and the firey Sherman, who send him on his new adventure behind Confederate lines to solve the mystery of 40 murdered slaves. Parry's discriptions of the preening Beauregard and the ponderous Halleck are pure poetic mischief! And we meet the delightfully odd figure of the transplanted Englishman Barnaby B. Barnaby, a truly stalward fellow one would hope to encounter again. Parry's clever insights into immigrant Welsh-Irish-Scots-English tribal bigotry get better with each installment. His writing scatters gems of wit, wisdom, whimsey and pathos on every page.
For those those who have followed Parry's telling of Abel Jones' adventures through the back alleys of the Civil War, here is the best volume yet. For first-time readers, start at the beginning, but be sure to buy this one!
There is tragedy aplenty in Owen Parry's yarn. Some of it is a vehicle for suspense to draw the reader along. But the fundamental tragedy depicted is one that stains our noble history to this day. The epic struggle that resulted - and its rightful outcome, however incomplete - is what made America modern. Parry has few peers in the telling of it, because he makes it a human progression.
Look you! All will want to know of Abel Jones' next adventure and what Owen Parry next will reveal to us about ourselves. Seems we are next to find Abel in Blighty! One must hope he eventually will go with Sherman to the Sea. But let that bide.

This excellent book begins with a depiction of some of the most exciting, interesting and well-written Civil War battle scenes I have ever read. For that first chapter alone, the book is worth reading, but it is more than a battle book. Once again, the author has woven a tightly bound mystery into the Civil War era, and placed the intrepid Abel Jones right in the middle of it. This time, he goes into the Confederate lines to help find out why runaway slaves are being massacred. It's quite an exciting story, and the plot is moving forward even when you don't realize it. The writing is uniformly excellent, as usual, and all of the scenes are important, in addition to the depiction of actual historical characters. This is developing into a tremendous series, and I look forward to the next book, when I assume our hero will be overseas.

This is the best novel so far in a consistently wonderful series. Parry's remarkable, soldier's eye view of the battle of Shiloh is easily the most realistic, stunning picture of Civil War (or any) combat I have encountered. But this book is about much more than just that tragic battle. It's a dark (yet sunlit), riveting journey into the South of 1862, an honest, fair and complex portrait of slavery, and as beautifully-written as any novel I have read by a living American writer. The prose is musical, poetic, yet clear as clean glass, and the characters, from the wonderful Abel Jones to the Pickwickian Barnaby B. Barnaby make this an unusual novel at a time when characterization of the first order seems out of style in contemporary literature. I could ramble on about how much I loved this book--for which I was waiting anxiously--but I'll end by saying that, yes, it is a page-turner mystery--but the real mystery is how anyone could capture a lost world so beautifully and heartbreakingly on the page. Very strongly recommended for all who love good fiction, historical, mystery, or in any other genre!

In the third Abel Jones mystery, the Major has been summoned to Tennessee to General Grant's army, to solve a series of mass murders where the victims are all runaway slaves. When he arrives, he stumbles into the middle of the battle of Shiloh, and makes himself useful scraping up a group of men to fight. When the battle's over, he gets to investigating, and soon is among the Confederates, under a flag of truce, searching for the killer.

Parry does three things well with this series of mysteries. First, the plots themselves are worthy mysteries. Though not of the Agatha Christie variety, they are believable, and complex enough that you must pay attention. Second, the author uses the historical setting and the main character to take you on a guided tour of parts of our Civil War. In this installment, we meet both U.S. Grant, and William T. Sherman, and later P.G.T. Beauregard. The portraits of all three are wonderful (the author doesn't think much of Beauregard, who comes off a preening idiot; from what I've read, he's not far wide of the mark) and not just hung onto the story: all three have roles to play in the story. And third, the whole of the book is told in vernacular, so that it reads as if this Welsh veteran of the Sepoy Rebellion were actually talking to you. This is a remarkable accomplishment, and well worth the effort by itself.

I can't emphasize how good this book is. Parry seems to be getting better, if that's possible. It's as if George MacDonald Fraser wrote a Civil War mystery story with a Welsh protagonist as its narrator. It's that good.

I live just a stone's throw from the Shiloh battlefield. I have walked that once blood saturated ground an untold number of times. I've read, seen, visited, even picnicked where wholesale slaughter was the once the game, but nothing I've encountered before was as vividly real and tangible as the first 25 pages of "Call Each River Jordan." The quality of the writing is beyond description. Read it ... just read it!

And then there is the plot. If the book has a weakness, it is in promising suspense and not really delivering. However, the atmospheric tension and characterization is fine enough to cover the the lack of plot twists and other devices synonymous with mysteries.

President Lincoln hand picks Major Abel Jones to solve the mass murder of 40 slaves attempting to escape to the North. In order to do so, he must obtain the cooperation of the Confederate Army following their humiliating defeat at Shiloh. Aided by a young southern aristocrat and his English manservant, Jones travels the hills, the fields, and the swamp bottoms of Mississippi, meeting both blacks and whites of all social stratas.

This isn't a cozy, comfortable book. Slavery was ugly. The Civil War was ugly. Mankind can be incredibly ugly. The only beauty in this novel is in the polished writing. Fans of quality literature and history buffs will find it as difficult to put down as I did.

This beautifully-written novel is almost magical in its ability to make the past live again. The first-person account of the ferocious battle of Shiloh is simply the best description of combat I've ever read, while a later cavalry skirmish superbly captures the feel of fighting on horseback (if you've ever ridden, you'll recognize the feel), and a final, dark-of-the-night climax gets at the brutality of war, at any time or place, better than splashy CNN coverage or even the best non-fiction works. There are two more areas where Parry truly excels: The flawless recreation of the voices--the accents, rhythms and prejudices of the past--and the creation of living characters. The narrator, Abel Jones, who has appeared in Parry's two previous novels, deepens and deepens, revealing ever more about himself, while the supporting characters range from the Falstaffian (or Dickensian, to be more accurate) Barnaby B. Barnaby, a killer with a soft heart and a soft belly, to a unique, subtle take on some Southern cliches. In Parry's novels, no character is ever as simple as he or she seems at first--we meet people who live convincingly on the page. Overall, this series is the most "adult" I've ever read--not in terms of explicitness or vulgarity, but in terms of emotional depth and realism. If Parry can sustain this quality of writing and storytelling in his future works, we just may have a fictional re-telling of the Civil War to rival Shelby Foote's non-fiction. And, by the way, this book is enormous fun to read. I would give it more than five stars, if I could.

Every writer of fiction strives for the deathless opening sentence, the string of words so powerful they remain burned into the reader's memory long after he has put the book aside. "Call Each River Jordan," Owen Parry's third book in his ongoing chronicle of Abel Jones's adventures during the American Civil War, begins with a stunning opening sentence:

"I remember the burning men."

That was Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862, and Abel Jones, gimpy leg and all, is right in the thick of it. This opening chapter of "Call Each River Jordan" is a riveting and emotionally exhausting tour of "Bloody Shiloh." You know that in real life Mr. Parry must have walked over the battlefield but what elevates his recreation of that climactic event above the mere analytical military study is the eerie sense that Parry was THERE, that through some myserious ability he was able to look back in time into the Maelstrom of the battle. This kind of historical insight characterizes Mr. Parry's previous books, but here it virtually overwhelms you. That's the kind of writing that marks a truly great literary talent.

Oh, and there is a great mystery here too. Someone has committed a mass murder so terrible, so potentially damaging to both the Southern and Northern causes, that Major Jones is sent under a flag of truce behind the Confederate lines to seek his enemy's help finding the perpetrators. Here Mr. Parry's ability as a portraitist of human character shines through in the likes of Billy Sherman, P. T. G. ("Old Borey") Beauregard and the ragtag soldiers he led. All these people are seen through the eyes of the abstemious Abel Jones, loyal Union man bred in the strict tradition of Welsh Methodism. If Jones appears a little too righteous at times and a little too opinionated, well, that's our Abel, and in real life (which these books are becoming to me!) we'd expect him to be no other way.

Now I have written fiction in my time and even gotten some of it published. I have read good stuff too, the Sharras, MacKinley Kantor, Bernard Cornwell, Joseph Stanley Pennel, Mary Johnston (yes, give the lady credit, you'd think she marched with Stonewall Jackson) and those writers, while they have often written stuff as good as Owen Parry's, none of them, not one, has written better than you'll read here.

There is something sublime about this book.

It would be easy for Parry to follow the easy path to Civil War fiction that so many other authors have followed. But, instead, he chooses to probe the depths of slavery and abolition and Union versus Confederacy.

Although this book is billed as a historical suspense/mystery novel, it is far more. The murder plot is merely a device the author uses to explore the depths of human character and the interplay between Whites and Blacks during the Civil War. All of Parry's characters are very human, including his main hero and his major villain. The terrors and bloodlust of war are portrayed vividly. And, to Parry's credit, not all of the action takes place on the battlefield.

Main character Abel Jones is a Welsh major hired by President Lincoln to solve the mass murder of some Blacks barely over the Shiloh battle lines. To do so, he must coordinate his activities with officers from the Confederacy. The Union blames the Confederates for the murders and the Confederacy blames the Union. But Abel is Able as he solves the dilemma. But, as I said, the mystery plot is secondary.

Abel struggles with the line between Christian non-violence and wartime bloodshed. Some characters struggle with loss of life and property while others struggle with the concept of true freedom.

The only negative to this book is its obvious setup at the finish for a sequel. I don't dislike sequels or series novels, but the setup is too obvious.

Nonetheless, this book is glorious and there really is something sublime here that I can't pinpoint. A treasure.