Customer Reviews

Oliver Wiswell

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Wow. I wish I could give this book six stars. I wish I could demote every five-star rating I've given to a book or a CD or a DVD so that I could give OLIVER WISWELL a unique five-star rating, thus marking its place as one of the best books I've ever read, period. Reading this book was an epiphany. Having an undergraduate history minor, and having taken courses in historiography, I was used to the idea of reading history while keeping in mind that it was written by the victors and by people with their own agendas; but never has that principle been so real, and so vivid, as in the reading of this book. In all my years of school I never learned so much about the Revolutionary War, never cared so much about the war, and never read a book that made me want to visit New Brunswick, Canada.

The novel begins in April 1775, when the protagonist is ejected from his home by American rebels, and ends in 1783, when the war has ended and he and other Loyalists leave their home country to establish roots in Canada. In between, the author manages to have Oliver plausibly meeting some of the most interesting characters involved (General Howe, John Vardill, John Cruger, etc) and at the scene of many of the war's most interesting events (the Battle of Bunker (Breed's) Hill, the rebels' surrender of New York, the intrigue-ridden courts of Paris and London, the trek to Kentucky by fleeing Tories along Boone's Wilderness Trail, the siege of Ninety Six and Benedict Arnold's campaign in the south, and the Loyalists' post-war settlement in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Gibralter, Bermuda and the Bahamas). Furthermore, we become involved in the personal lives of several main characters: the young Mr. Wiswell, his resourceful and loyal friend Tom Buell, Sally Leighton -- the rebel girl Oliver leaves behind, and the irascible Mrs. Belcher Byles. In the course of the novel we come to have genuine affection for these characters.

I hated for this book to end. I teared up through the last ten pages, more fully comprehending the pain and torment of America's first civil war and more fully appreciating the suffering and loss of people on both sides of this horrible ordeal.

If you are willing to read 800+ pages you will be rewarded not only by a remarkable personal story, but you will undoubtedly know more about the Revolutionary War than you dreamed possible. Kenneth Roberts was a remarkable author.

If you enjoy historical fiction or are interested in early American history, then I would recommend this book, because of its unusual (and neglected) subject matter, and because Roberts is a very fine writer. But for other readers the book would likely be too long.

The title character is a well-educated New Englander who is disgusted with the rabble-rousing politics of Boston agitators like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and when forced to pick sides when fighting began, chose to side with the crown. He is recruited as a spy / intelligence gatherer and sent on various missions to Long Island, London, Paris, and South Carolina, accompanied by an extraordinarily resourceful and clever jack-of-all-trades named Tom Buell.

The book is essentially a fictional autobiography, covering the entire American Revolution through the perspective of a person actively involved in the events of a tumultuous period. Therefore a long book is necessary. Nor does the action move slowly. But Roberts's dialogue often lapses into long-winded speech-making by the loyalist characters (especially Buell) as they express their reasons for opposing the rebellion, and their frustration with the hardships they experience. The account of Wiswell's mission to London and Paris might well have been omitted, although it provides the reader, through Wiswell, an inside view of the confused workings of the King's government. Without understanding or ever speaking a word of French, Wiswell is deployed to capture diplomatic papers from Ben Franklin, the American plenipotentiary in France. Two of Wiswell's friends from America appear in Paris as extremely implausible fellow spies for the loyalist cause.

Wiswell's adventures in the South, which include a vivid depiction of a fortress siege, are the best part of the book. Incidentally, it is a useful corrective to the Hollywood baloney in The Patriot (the Mel Gibson movie), which had its setting in the southern campaigns of the Revolutionary War.

The author seems to have intended the book mainly to serve a didactic purpose: the illustrate, with fair comprehensiveness, the reasons and extent of loyalist opposition to the Continental Congress. He does this very well, while making clear, through depictions of several incompetent and stubborn English officials - General Howe is targeted especially - how intelligent and respectable Americans could decide that independence from Great Britain had become necessary.

Once again I'm admitting to bias in my review, but this is another solid novel by the premier novelist of the colonial American period. Roberts writes of young Wiswell as he faced the struggle of a world he did not wish to see changed. Wiswell was a Loyalist and suffered much for his beliefs. Too many novelists (and indeed some historians) write off the tribulations of the Loyalists because of so-called "patriotism." But patriotism is not so clearly defined. Wiswell believed he was acting out of patriotism when he made the desicions he did.

This book is another offering from a writer who can literally place the reader into the pages of his book and keep you there until the last page. The characters of the several books are cross-referenced enough so one gets the impression of a larger historical community. This allows Roberts to maintain continuity yet keeps him from writing in a historical vacuum. The reader will follow Wiswell's journey from New England to the southern colonies and ultimately beyond the borders of the United States.

With any luck, this and the rest of Roberts' books will never go out of print.

Oliver Wiswell is an excellent historical novel that, along with Rabble in Arms, Arundel, and The Battle of the Cowpens (all by Roberts) provides a comprehensive view of the American Revolution. Reading all 4 books, one learns a tremendous amount of history about some of the battles fought first in the North at Quebec, Lake Champlain, and Saratoga, and then in the South at the Cowpens and the implications it had for the final American victory at Yorktown.

The reader also gets an excellent insight into the viewpoints of the British, Loyalists, and Patriots during the conflict. So, I strongly recommend that all 4 books be read together (indeed, back in 1976 they were issued together as "A Reader on the American Revolution.")

So, why did I add "But..." to my review title?

Because I emphasize that the only way to fully understand Oliver Wiswell is to first read the other novels. In the book, Oliver is the Loyalist son of a well-to-do son of a rich Boston attorney. The society he comes from is the country's aristocracy of the time... rich, well educated, supremely disdainful of the "rabble" that is fighting for the American cause during the war. First read Rabble in Arms to get an understanding of the tremendous suffering and deprivation the Patriots suffered during the Revolution with incredible selflessness. Learn how they fought against all odds for their country, with little or no pay, often times with poor leadership and little food, and no personal gain while facing thousands of professional, well trained and armed soldiers and foreign mercenaries (not to mention Indians that were capable of quite savagely killing and scalping entire families or defenseless women like Jennie McCrae).

Then read Oliver Wiswell; I guarantee you that Oliver's constant disdain for the "scarecrows," the "rabble," the "pseuodo-soldiers" will grate on your nerves the more often he repeats such terms.

Of course rich Loyalists had no time for the idea of American independence; they benefited from the the British way of running the colonies. It were the "rabble" that suffered under the trade and settlement restrictions that the British sought to impose on the colonies for the benefit of their own economy, and to see to it that they and not the Americans controlled the settlement of the West. If men like Hancock were "failed" businesmen and "smugglers," it was due to British control of America's international trade that insisted that America not manufacture its own goods, and purchase only British made goods. If there was ill-clothed, un-shod "rabble" in America, it was because of such policies. Men like Hancock and Sam Adams recognized the eternal poverty many Americans would suffer unless those policies were overturned. They gambled their very lives on the behalf of the "rabble," when they could just as easily have settled comfortably into the upper classes along with Wiswell simply by continuing to smuggle goods. Hancock's signature on the Declaration of Independence would have been as good as signing his own death warrant if the Revolution had failed. On the other hand, men like Oliver Wiswell refused to see the consequences of the "good government" they believed Britain provided.

The American Revolution was more than just a "civil war," as Oliver keeps calling it... it was indeed a REVOLUTION, of the "rabble" that were so poor they went into battle without shoes and decent clothes and food because they were on the short end of a Colonial social system that benefited the likes of Wiswell. It's not an accident we call it the Revolutionary War.

Another reviewer dismissed Gibson's "The Patriot" and pointed to Oliver Wiswell as proof that it was just anti-British Patriot propaganda. I strongly suggest that readers also peruse "The Battle of the Cowpens" by Roberts. It's a short work, written shortly before Roberts died and meant as the core of a much longer historical novel he never got to finish. However, anyone who reads it will instantly recognize that "The Batle of the Cowpens," along with Robert's other works, is in fact the literary source for "The Patriot." In that book, Roberts aludes to "the almost unbelievable savagery" of BOTH the Patriot and Loyalist sides during the Revolution. In the South, the Loyalists and their Indian allies in fact did slaughter Patriot families unmercifully on the frontiers, and the Patriots responded in kind to put them down. For all the deprivations that Oliver Wiswell mentions, the fact is Oliver was deported to Boston ALIVE. The loyalist Tom Buell is tar and feathered, and literally ridden out on a rail, but he was ALIVE. One can well wish Loyalists at Simsbury Mines were better treated, and deplore the excesses that occured on Long Island... BUT, just a peek at the news out of Iraq each day today and the horrors perpetrated there by terrorists even now will show that Americans 230 years ago behaved in a far morally superior manner than others do even today in many places in the world.

As Steven Nason puts it in Rabble in Arms: If the Revolution was lost, and the Loyalists had not been driven out, it would have been the Loyalists like Wiswell that would have pointed out the Patriots for hanging. Wars and Revolutions are hard things, and it may seem like a hard-hearted thing to say: But, in fact America WAS better off winning its independence, and ridding itself of people like Wiswell that saw the likes of remarkable men like Washington, Jefferson, Hancock, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams as nothing but socially inferior "rabble."

Think of it this way: in World history there have been a few periods of incredible social and cultural "golden ages" when an amazing collection of great men that usually appear only one at a time per generation or two suddenly come on the scene together and change the course of civilization. The Golden Age of Athens was probably the greatest of such times. The Renaissance, with its Leondardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others was another. And, in the political sphere, the American Revolution - with the Founding Fathers - was arguably the most recent. And that is the group that Wiswell dismisses as "hypocrites" and "incompetents" and "rabble" worthy of only his disdain.

Oliver Wiswell is a great read, and allows the reader to share in the mindset of the Loyalists. It doesn't sugarcoat history and is frank about Patriot excesses - as Roberts' other books are frank about British and Loyalist excesses. Just be sure to read those other books, to remind yourself why, after all, Oliver and his kind were wrong and The War of American Independence was profoundly right.

Unlike most books about US history, this one is told from the POV of a Loyalist and the terrible injustices suffered under the hands of the "Rabble In Arms" in their fight for Independence. Kenneth Roberts preciseness in researching US history adds all the color and background necessary for even the most inscrutable history buff while weaving wonderful characters whose every word hangs in the readers minds months after the book has been closed. It clearly illustrates the way neighbour turned against neighbour, even brother against brother, all believing in their cause, all willing to fight to the death to win. The opening scene shows the senseless brutality committed by many when obcessed with a cause and blind to justice. Tom Buell is my favorite character because of his resourcefulness and precousesness. Oliver Wiswell has the true character motivated by truth and honor that should be a roll model for all Americans. This book is a MUST READ on anyone's list and should be required reading in all schools. BRAVO, KENNETH ROBERTS! and, THANK YOU.

Without doubt, this is one of the best historical novels I have ever read. Since there is always 2 sides to a question, this book gives you the other side of the American Revolution -- the side you never read in history books or are taught in school. Roberts doesn't have an axe to grind -- he just tells the story like a "Tory" or "Royalist" sees it. This information is long overdue.

Roberts has done it again but this time he takes the point of view of a Tory who is run out of the country by the revolutionaries. The book covers the entire American revolution from April 1775 to the settlement of Canada by the war's losing side. Reading this book you know his characters and how they felt and why they made the decisions they did at a difficult time in this country's history.

I'll be brief. I am puzzled by the reader who downgraded Oliver Wiswell for its sympathetic portrayal of middle-class loyalist Americans in the Revolutionary period. Roberts has written sympathetically about all classes in his opus, and Wiswell states frequently in the book that he is, after all, an American. Is that insufficently PC?
I've read other books by Kenneth Roberts and continue to read history and biography of the Revolutionary period. Judging by that material, Roberts' insight (remember he wrote over 70 years ago) is astonishing.
Although Roberts does not seem to have enjoyed the literary acclaim given Fitzgerald, Faulkner, even Hemingway and the like in contemporary criticism. I believe his works will and should endure.

Briefly, Kenneth Roberts filled out his treatment of the American Revolution through this novel providing a Loyalist's view of the Revolution. It was fascinating to follow the Revolution from the "other side" of our standard histories. The descriptions of events, people and issues were done nicely and rounded out the heroic viewpoints we usually learn in school. The effect did not detract from the facts or heroics of the rebel's side, but did round it out with balance and perspective. The tale and the romance are a bit tortuous, but this style of writing was to entertain, not read like a 60 minutes TV program action script. As such, this book continues to be a great read 65 years after it was first published. There is an interesting set of observations or subtext by Roberts on the futility of armed conflict, and that war solves nothing. That is interesting in the context of the American 1940s political setting. I am not sure of how Mr. Roberts viewed the possible American involvement in the struggle with Nazi Germany. Perhaps he was an adherent of the isolationist theory that was very popular with a number of prominent Americans in the years just before Pearl Harbor. Again, this novel is a great balance with the Robert's classic American Revolution novels that create the historic records of the American patriots.

Most people would be surprised to know that there were many "heroic" conservative young American men who, at least at first, did not want the guerrila fighters of the American Revolution to win against the established order (and significant economic benefits) that friendliness toward Britain signified. This novel follows the American Revolution from just such a perspective. It should be high in everyone's "must read" list.