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Devil's Dream: A Novel About Nathan Bedford Forrest

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"Devil's Dream" by Madison Smartt Bell is many things -- a book one can't put down; a fascinating story of American history and valiant warriors; and, finally, a book one wants never to end. This writer feels privileged to have discovered a perfect example of the novelist's craft. That is not to say it's an easy book -- it is, after all, a story of America's bloodiest war, and the protagonist, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is nothing if not a warior.

Forrest, a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, his family, friends, and cavalry cohorts form the nucleus of this story of a man who may well be the most fearless and single-minded person who ever lived. Author Bell's character development in "Devil's Dream" is breathtaking for the scope and depth of his presentation. In the course of the book, we meet his wife, children, slaves, friends, and, yes, his mistress, each one of whom is well-developed and who further informs us about Forrest's persona. Best of all, we come to see Black and White people, slave and free, in many roles during what must have been the most tense time of race relations in American history. Of particular interest, too, are the attitudes of southerners on the ground, many of whom cohabit with family members who are Union sympathizers.

Author Bell's macrocosmic knowledge of American history and microcosmic details of Civil War battles is awesome. And, most important, none of this information is "told" to us lecture-like -- it's all "shown" -- and you feel yourself seated behind Forrest on his horse as he plunges into the thick of a half-dozen battles. One is astounded by the number of knife cuts and bullets the man survived as well as the number he administered to others. You'll lose count of the number of horses shot out from under him, but you'll never forget the two horses whose wounds he plugged with a finger in order to keep the nag galloping on in the battle to kill more Yankees.

Bell's deft use of language is at once descriptive but also breathtaking for its creativity -- a single word, a touch that arrests your attention, holds it captive, e.g., "Somewhere behind them the second cannon coughed," "and the pair of them were silhouetted in silver by the mist," "Day should have broken, but fog smothered the sun." And you'll find moments of surprising beauty in small details, e.g, following a battle where blood colored the Mississippi River and in the following morning when the fog lifts and there is the smell of death and gunpowder -- a white owl settles in a tree now leafless and "it preened its yellowish feathers and shrugged."

"Devil's Dream" by Madison Smartt Bell is more than a book to recommend, it's a MUST READ to add to your collection.

This is a terrific novel about a real figure: Nathan Bedford Forrest, who became one of the most respected Confederate generals in the Civil War. A slave-owner himself, he offers to free any slaves who will join him in fighting for the right to retain the institution. We see him in a rage, breaking a pot over the head of an insubordinate slave, then the next moment going to considerable expense to seek out and buy back the man's wife, who had been sold away from him. This only one of the contradictions that make Forrest so fascinating. Of minimal education himself, he nonetheless manages to win the heart of Mary Ann Montgomery, the genteel product of a finishing school, who tempers his roughness with grace, understanding, and a firm touch. Although still obviously in love with his wife, Bedford finds a different kind of passion with a slave woman, Catharine, with whom he will have several children. Two of his sons, one legitimate and the other not, will fight with him in the war, and the rivalry between them and their mixed pride and envy of their father forms one of the minor strands in this absorbing and exciting book.

I should say that I am no Civil War buff, and have read very few other books about the conflict. This one is good, not because it casts light on events that I already know, but because it leads me into a world I hardly knew at all. I can think of only other one novel that comes so close to making me feel the detail and texture of the war, Michael Shaara's magnificent THE KILLER ANGELS, his novelization of Gettysburg. But while Shaara takes the panoptic view, giving equal time to generals and soldiers on both sides, Bell filters everything through the eyes of Forrest and those closest to him. While Shaara focuses on a single set-piece battle, Bell deals as much with skirmishes, raids, and surprise attacks, a kind of fighting in woods and mountains that seems closer to guerilla tactics than the maneuvers of large armies. And while Shaara covers the action of only a few days, Bell ranges freely over a period of two decades, from 1845 to 1865.

Perhaps Bell's most significant decision was not to tell the book chronologically. His forty shortish chapters jump around between the prewar period, the war itself, and the immediate aftermath. Each centers around a specific anecdote, giving the book a series of immediate paybacks on the way to a powerful cumulative effect. I'm not sure I always understood the reason for the specific ordering of specific chapters, but the result is to give the book a psychological rather than historical unity. The connecting thread is the surprising mind of Nathan Bedford Forrest himself, with all his built-in contradictions. Bell also introduces -- indeed opens with -- a kind of chorus character, a free black from Haiti by way of New Orleans, whose name, Henri, is transformed into "Ornery" by the soldiers. Henri has the gift of second sight, able to foresee people's deaths, and in some of the more visionary scenes he is actually dead himself. Oddly enough, this fantastic aspect enhances the immediacy of the rest. It threads through the book like the "Devil's Dream" of the title, a fiddle tune that starts slow and works up faster and faster.

The Devil, of course, is Forrest, which was how Sherman described him to Lincoln; his Dream has evaporated by the war's end, although nothing dims the man's fighting spirit. There are plenty of episodes which can account for Forrest's reviled reputation, not least a massacre of black and white soldiers at Fort Pillow, but Bell presents his protagonist with sympathy and understanding. What he gives us is a flawed but honest individual of irresistible personal magnetism, a rough-tongued leader who is impossible for soldiers not to follow or readers not to admire: "Git round the left," he shouted at the remnants of the Seventh. "Take the damnjobberknowlyankees in the rear there. Git on with ye -- if ye're feart to be shot ye best go forward for I'm well and goddam ready to shoot ye in the back if ye don't."

Well, I struggled a bit to write this review and I really wanted to give it 4 stars. But I couldn't in the end because I don't think that would be comparing "Devil's Dream" fairly to Bell's "All Souls Rising", a novel I find the richer and more moving of the two, and the novel to which I would attribute 4-5 stars.

"Devil's..." is all in all a very entertaining, original and informative read. The story of Nathan Bedford Forrest is a truly fascinating one, and some of the literary tools Bell uses (i.e. the bits of "magical realism") add to that fascination . Some of the events in the first half of the novel regarding Forrest's family are powerfully done, e.g.the affairs Forrest had are described in a interesting, non-moralistic, human way; the death of his daughter is devastating..

But in the end, the constant chronological swings tired me. After loving the first 250 pages of the novel, I virtually flipped through the last 50. My sense was that what was described in those last pages had already happened earlier in the book (e.g. another horse shot dead from under Forrest after another heroic charge...). I had also grown tired at this point of trying to decipher Forrest's tennessee accent.

I remain an admirer of Smartt Bell. But "All Souls Rising" will provide readers a better experience of his talent

Ambivalence nags at me
I both liked and grew a bit bored with Madison Smartt Bell's interesting Devil's Dream. Historical fiction about Civil War Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Mr. Bell used an interesting literary formula to examine the more intimate elements of General Forrest's roguish life and character. Nathan Forrest was both a simple man and extremely complex. He was a first class fighter, a man of principle, yet character flawed in several ways.
The book is not an easy one to read and requires the reader to pay attention. This is where my interest flagged as I found my mind wandering at times. In several places I skimmed filler to get back to more interesting writing. I did enjoy Mr. Bell's use of colloquial English and how he related General Forrest's views concerning slavery. All in all not an easy novel to read if you do not have some prior background concerning Nathan Bedford Forrest the man and famous civil war general. I am a long time civil war buff and General Forrest is one of my favorite civil war characters who I have read extensively about. Fairly accurate historically but do not expect to read much in the way of actual battles or personal combat. Some, but that is NOT the main thrust of this novel. Also, the non-sequential literary style of the writer can confuse the reader.
Not the best Civil War historical fiction I have read yet still interesting.
Hard to recommend as a hardback. If you are interested get it from your local library or wait for the paperback. Worth the read but be warned it will demand that the reader pay attention.

Devil's Dream is a meticulously researched novel, but it's just that--a novel, not a history of Forrest or the Civil War. History buffs will not find much reason to object to the book, but they are not its primary audience. The book is essentially a character study of a brilliant but seriously flawed man. There's plenty of battlefield action, but it's chiefly in service of the larger narrative about Forrest and the culture that produced him. The book has a mystical element woven through it, suggesting that Forrest's war is one episode in an eternal struggle, whether it's the struggle for freedom, or the struggle to rise above our base nature.

Like all Bell's work, Devil's Dream is beautifully written, but the strength of the book is Bell's insight about Forrest. He doesn't try to explain the man, but explores his contradictions in a clear-eyed, unsentimental way.

When I was little boy I used to meet my grandmother for lunch at Forrest Park in Memphis, TN. In the middle of the park there was a statue of a man on a horse and we would eat our lunch beside the statue. The man, of course, was Nathan Bedford Forrest. Years later, as I began to learn about warfare, I learned that Forrest was feared by many as a guerrilla fighter during a war mostly fought face to face over pieces of terrain. As a Marine my curiosity about the man grew. Still later I began to hear that he had been a slave trader and was affiliated with the KKK, perhaps in charge of it after the war. The reviews about his treatment of slaves were mixed.

It is tempting to try to write a biography of him here, but it occurs to me that Madison Smartt Bell has already done a fine job of that. The book is not sequential - it jumps around in time. I think I heard in college that skipping around in time is a breach of some basic principle of writing, but Bell has earned the right to ignore college writing principles. The effect is that it reads like a collection of short stories and I love short stories. These stories as you read on begin to collect as a picture of the man, probably much better than a chronological account would have. And the picture is a very interesting man during an intense period of history. I recommend it to anyone.

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
[...]

Madison Smartt Bell has chosen none other than controversial Confederate cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest as the subject for his fifteenth novel, "Devil's Dream." Forrest was a conflicted man of many contradictions; he was a married man, and slave trader who fathered a son with his black mistress. He was born into a poor farming family and became a man of wealth, and married a woman above his station. He was a Christian with a gambling addiction who profanely swore, but did not drink alcohol. He was a brilliant cavalry officer, brave and daring, though often reckless, who was at once loved and hated by his men.

Bell's novel covers the twenty years spanning from 1845 to 1865. Jumping backwards and forwards through time, the author examines the complicated relationships of Nathan Bedford Forrest's life; with his wife and family, his slaves, his black mistress, and his soldiers. Often Forrest's family is at odds within itself: his wife, the former Miss Mary Ann Montgomery, is jealous of Catherine, Forrest's black mistress. The author also highlights the sibling rivalry between Forrest's two sons, Willie, who is white, and Matthew, who is black.

Added into the mix, Bell stirs in a trace of mysticism, as many of the battle scenes are told through the viewpoint of Henri, a free Haitian black, who joins Forrest's cavalry and frequently talks with the ghosts of Forrest's cavaliers who were killed in battle.

The books largest failing is what it doesn't cover, and perhaps the most controversial aspect of Forrest's life, his relationship with the Ku Klux Klan. For a novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest, this aspect of his life most certainly should have been included, and would have given the novelist so much more to work with.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the subject of Bell's novel, never quite emerges from the nebular cloud of Bell's nonlinear prose. Forrest's speech is filled with dialect, which at once is somewhat cryptic, yet manages to get the point across.

"Devil's Dream" never quite gels as a complete novel, but rather seems to be a novel in pieces, much like a jigsaw puzzle. It challenges its reader to stay alert and demands the reader's full attention to put its pieces together in order to see the much larger picture.

I'll leave it to fans of this genre to discuss the merits of the book itself, but I'm writing a review of the audio version to commend the narrator, Scott Sowers. His reading (acting, really) is just incredible! I've never recommended an audio book based solely on the reader, but this performance is not to be missed. I wonder how I would feel about the book without having heard him read it, but I suspect I would not have finished it in my own "voice". Great, Scott!

A Tour De Force and Instant Classic. N.B. Forrest was likely more larger than life than any other Civil War general, and after 150 years, a wealth of mythology has accrued to his life. Generations have waited for a text that could breathe life into Forrest and show us the true man. This is the most realistic portrayal yet.
The book spins a lyrical yarn of NB Forrest, his origins from the backwoods and his ascension as the greatest cavalry general of the war, presenting as real a portrait we are likely to ever have of the man. The story takes you into the slave cabins, the dining rooms and bedrooms of the Big House, the cotton fields, the streets of Memphis Tennessee and North Mississippi towns, the hills and swales of the countryside, where you hear the sounds of birds, horses, mules and the terrible sounds of battle through hot dank summers and cold harsh winters.
The prose draws the reader into 1860's milieu. We feel the swoon and sting of the seasons' elements, hear the birds and farm animals, smell the odors of the slave quarters and the kitchen in the Big House, and experience the homespun ways and mannerisms of the people of the time. The reader is transported to the South of the mid nineteenth century.
Perhaps only a work of fiction could do Forrest justice. The narrative does not stint in fleshing out the person of Bedford Forrest. Fact and fiction are woven seamlessly to create a living, breathing portrayal of Forrest, doing battle, making love, rising into fits of rage when challenged or provoked. He grapples with the political issues of the day with whites and blacks and of course with the issues of tactics and strategy and what it takes to lead men. Forrest commanded his troops with a magisterial air, leading from the front, charging headlong into the hottest battles, wounded numerous times, and having more than a score of horses shot from under him.
For those interested in the history of Memphis, many locations and landmarks are mentioned (Elmwood Cemetery, Mississippi & Kerr St.s).
However, there are historical inaccuracies, which, for students of the Civil War, detract from the force of the narrative. The conversation Forrest has with his slaves inviting them to join him for war, if it did occur, would never have transpired in the manner depicted. No one was calling the War a crusade to end slavery in 1861. Lincoln called it a war to save the union. However, to the modern reader, the idea that the South fought the war to preserve slavery is so ingrained as to be almost beyond debate. In reality, the South went through a lawful process with State Assemblies legislating an exit from the Union, and when Lincoln called for Northern States to muster soldiers to "quash the Rebellion", for the South, it essentially became a fight for Independence. Forrest did offer freedom to the slaves who joined him in the fight. An historical inaccuracy, which may have been poetic license: in the Battle of Shiloh the Confederate General is called Joe Johnston. In reality it was Albert Sidney Johnston.
Forrest's affair with a slave girl is pure fiction, but strangely rounds out his character and creates narrative impact.
The inclusion of the Haitian, Henri, is a fictional ploy on which the entire narrative rests, since it's his dreams that carry long stretches of the story and sometimes it's hard to tell if we are in his dream or actual life. Fitting with the theme, the story jumps back and forth in time, just as a dream does.
Madison Smartt Bell has woven a tapestry that breathes life into the complex man who was Nathan Bedford Forrest. A "blood and guts" portrait that reads almost like an epic poem. Banjoes, fiddles, and dances depict rare but pleasant interludes, rounding out the picture. Using vivid prose, lyrically wrought, the author draws the reader into a dream that doesn't let up, holding the reader entranced `til the final page.
Forrest's worst fault, in league with his violent temper, was his use of profanity. Bell graphically evokes the blasphemies spewed from Forrest's mouth. While this artistic expression pounds the reader with evocations of the dark side of Forrest, it offends anyone with piety for God's name. Surely Mary Ann never permitted her husband to speak that way in her presence and I place myself in company with Mary Ann.