Customer Reviews

No Certain Rest

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I am a great fan of Jim Lehrer's work. His book, White Widow, is an American classic. No Certain Rest is very different, but as rewarding. A quietly searing search for the truth about one of the worst battles of the Civil War, the book deals in another kind of obsession. Lehrer comes to his subject with a wealth of historical knowledge and he writes with a crispness and an economy that makes this book a deceptively easy read -- a page turner -- when, in fact, its themes and characters are complex. This book is for Civil War buffs and novices alike. I enjoyed it immensely and recommend it as one of Lehrer's best.

No Certain Rest is a modern day novel focusing on a Civil War mystery. The main character, Dr. Spaniel, is a government archeologist who is brought in to work on an unidentified set of remains discovered accidentally by relic hunters near the battle of Antietam. The overall mystery is fascinating as is the details included in a letter written by a civil war survivor who is a character in the book. The book provides authentic details of the war that are a bit gruesome and the dialogue is a bit stilted and dry but overall I enjoyed the book.

I love Jim Lehrer's news program, and I had heard that he was a prolific writer, and I am a passionate student of Civil War history, so you can imagine my delight when I saw this book for sale at the giftshop at the Antietam National Battlefield, having just visited Burnside's Bridge. The cover blurb was fascinating, the story looked fun -- and the book is 10% off at the park!

Alas, I must add my voice to the chorus here. Mr. Lehrer ain't no Hemingway. The story begins well, then rapidly begins introducing one-dimensional characters and implausible plot twists. I finished the book wishing that the story had ended a chapter or two earlier.

A final comment: if Mr. Lehrer wanted to deeply address the subject of futile infantry charges, ordered by incompetent commanders and made inevitable by gaps between technology and tactics, there are far better historical places where he could have done so -- all within easy reach of Mr. Lehrer's home in Washington. Frederickburg and Cold Harbor come to mind, but I'm sure there are many others.

Lehrer presents two parallel stories, a contemporary American Civil War description of battle events and a modern archaeologist's attempt to decipher those events. (This is a technique also used to much more spine-tingling effect by Beverly Connors in her archaeological mystery stories.) Unfortunately the archy character is an excitable scatterbrain and mere day-dreamer, whose pursuit of the past leads to a cruel modern tragedy. There are passages of incantory violence found in an "original" soldier's confessional narrative.

Lehrer knows how to plot and has a good premise here, but his prose is jarringly rough, wheezy, and simplistic (e.g., he concludes far too many descriptions with the incredibly lazy phrase "and whatever"). Of the old McNeil-Lehrer PBS News duo, McNeil is the better writer of fiction. This could have made a chilling short story but it went long and whatever.

Lehrer presents two parallel stories, a contemporary American Civil War description of battle events and a modern archaeologist's attempt to decipher those events. (This is a technique also used to much more spine-tingling effect by Beverly Connors in her archaeological mystery stories.) Unfortunately the archy character is an excitable scatterbrain and mere day-dreamer, whose pursuit of the past leads to a cruel modern tragedy. There are passages of incantory violence found in an "original" soldier's confessional narrative.

Lehrer knows how to plot and has a good premise here, but his prose is jarringly rough, wheezy, and simplistic (e.g., he concludes far too many descriptions with the incredibly lazy phrase "and whatever"). Of the old McNeil-Lehrer PBS News duo, McNeil is the better writer of fiction. This could have made a chilling short story but it went long and whatever.

This is the story of a National Park Service archeologist, Don Spaniel, who is called in to find the identity of a Union soldier whose bones were found by Civil War souvenir hunters on private land very near the site where the bloody Antietam battle was fought. Spaniel is a man focused on history of the Civil war, so much so that this is the main focus of his life. His passion is contagious and the reader also gets wrapped up in trying to find out who this Union soldier was. Working with a Smithsonian anthropologist Reg Womach, this duo search out clues left in the grave as well as the story told by forensic examination of the bones.
Woven through the story are the details of that awful day on September 17, 1862 when over 23,000 soldiers lost their lives in the single bloodiest day in U.S. military history through the mistakes of General Burnside and other Union Army leaders. This mistake, and the escape of the Confederate forces, resulted in the extension of the war by 3 years with hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

The story is told in two ways: while Spaniel and Womack are unraveling the clues, we also get to read the account of that day by a Union soldier who wrote the story ten years after the battle. It was a little confusing at first to understand that Spaniel did not have that written account until his own investigation was almost complete. However both lines of the story do complement each other once you realize what is going on.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story on all counts: the mystery aspect and the Civil war story. The story was well written and went at a brisk pace. I found the plot twist at the end a little bizarre but overall strongly recommend this book to both mystery and history enthusiasts.

At the heart of the book is a murder on the battlefield of Antietam. the remains are found by artifact hunters and the murderis deuced by an archeologist and his Smithsonian pathologist friend. The premise is a good one. Unfortunately, Mr. Lehrer goes no where with it.

This book really contains very little. Very little history, very little mystery, very little archeology, very little forensics - well, you get it.

The story line could have been good if fleshed out more. The author spends way too much time recounting his hero's imaginings of the battle at Antietam Creek. There was also much redundancy in the recountings of the battles.

Lastly, the last chapter containing a modern day murder is completely incongruous and superfluous.

This is a book to skip. I was hoping for some interesting insights into the battle or some in depth accounts on the archeology. The book delivers neither. It is mostly an ode to the Civil War by the main character, a National Park Archeologist, who apparently wishes he was there.

This is a very interesting novel that captures both the ferocity of the Battle of Antietam and intensity of feelings that people have about the Civil War. Although at times No Certain Rest feels like it was written by an intellectual news commentator for PBS (which Lehrer is), the book is easy to read and the story becomes increasingly intense as the protagonist gets closer to his conclusion. The ending also catches you by surprise. You don't have to be a Civil War buff (I'm not) to enjoy this book, merely a fan of well-written mystery/suspense novels.

This is a short novel dealing with a puzzle from America's past. A pair of relic hunters are searching the Antietam battlefield, and find a skeleton with a bullet hole through its head. As the park service's local archeologist investigates, it becomes clear that the dead soldier was an officer, and was killed in the battle, but not (apparently) in combat. This intrigues the archaeologist, and off he goes to investigate and solve the mystery.

This is an interesting, if short book. There are interesting themes here. Several of the main characters almost kill one another (or do so) at various points, and you get the feeling that Mr. Lehrer is trying to make a point about violence and friendships. There is also some thoughts on the Civil War and the soldiers who died in it, and refreshingly it's not mostly about the gallant Confederates, who tend to get most of the ink in this sort of thing. I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it.

Excited at first to read the book, I quickly became disappointed. The plot seems great. The character development is simplistic. Most reviews say this is a good read for civil war buffs. I disagree. The historical aspect of the book is basic. The fictional part is imaginative, but the characters become annoying and the plot lumbers along. It is a quick, easy, thoughtless read. (try Landscape Turned Red by Sears for a great factual interpretation of the battle)