The Wolf Pit [Hardcover]

Marly Youmans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2001

A powerful yet intimate novel of the Civil War on the home and battle fronts

Winner of the 2001 Michael Shaara Award for Civil War Fiction

The Wolf Pit offers a gripping portrait of two young Virginians forever altered by violence and civil war. Robin, a young Confederate soldier, battles from a valley of blood to a burning wilderness to labyrinthine trenches. He clings-despite the slaughter of friends and illusions-to what gives him strength, to the beautiful and the uncanny: family pictures, Psalms, and an old tale about a pair of mysterious green children found in a wolf pit. Robin carries these inside the very palisades of hell, the Elmira prison camp.
Agate, the daughter of a hired-out slave, embraces the forbidden teachings of her mistress, Miss Fanny. But the images she has fashioned for herself shatter when she encounters and deeply offends her owner, Young Master. At the Williams Home Place, Agate learns the meaning of her mother's cautionary tales as she struggles to survive loss and degradation and to pit knowledge and truth against evil.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It is said that the best novels are never about events, but about the people events happen to. The event in Youmans's latest (after Catherwood) is the Civil War, and the people it happens to are Robin, a young Confederate soldier, and Agate, a mulatto slave girl. In this lush, poetic and heavily symbolic double tale, each of the characters suffers untold miseries. Robin's are endured in the heat of battle and the horrors of prison camp, while Agate must bear the indignities of slavery. Literature is a source of comfort and hope for both: Agate, who has secretly been taught to read and write, is a voracious reader and writer of essays, and Robin is haunted and heartened by a story in a book he picks up at an abandoned plantation, about two mysterious green children found in a wolf pit. Learning, however, is a double-edged sword, as Agate discovers when her owner cruelly mutilates her, fearing the power that comes with knowledge. What differentiates this from the standard Civil War novel is the startling sense of language: "Wolves. He hadn't seen one in several years, had forgotten the way they could trickle away between trees like silvery water." There is a sensuous, page-long description of Agate's first encounter with an orange, as she discovers this small miracle of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The novel's many dramatic and traumatic events will keep the reader breathless, while the haunting, lyrical language and the fierce intelligence behind it reminds us we are reading a writer and storyteller of the first order. (Sept.)Forecast: The authenticity of this novel will appeal to Civil War buffs, while its emotion and language will be appreciated by readers of quality fiction. Youmans is one of the best current Southern writers, and this latest effort should garner her more readers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

". . . Marly Youmans has shown herself as a writer of skill and daring. She merits comparison only with the best." -- Elizabeth Spencer

"Beautifully crafted and rich in historical detail, The Wolf Pit is a stunning novel, mesmerizing from beginning to end." -- Jill McCorkle

"Marly Youman's lyrical touch puts her in the first rank of contemporary American novelists." -- Curtis Wilke, author of Dixie

"No other writer I know of can bring the past to us so musically, so truly, as Marly Youmans." -- Howard Bahr

"There is an atmosphere, a palpable sense of time and place, about The Wolf Pit which grips the reader fervently." -- Lee Smith

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374291950
• ISBN-13: 978-0374291952
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,157,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/
http://youtube/user/marlyoumans/

Marly Youmans is the author of five novels: LITTLE JORDAN (David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995); CATHERWOOD (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996); THE WOLF PIT (FSG, 2001, The Michael Shaara Award); and VAL/ORSON (UK: P. S. Publishing, 2009); and A DEATH AT THE WHITE CAMELLIA ORPHANAGE (Mercer University Press, 2012, The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.) In addition, she has published two Appalachian fantasies for young adults, THE CURSE OF THE RAVEN MOCKER (FSG, 2003) and INGLEDOVE (FSG, 2005). Her poetry collections are THE THRONE OF PSYCHE (Mercer University Press, 2011) and CLAIRE(Louisiana State University, 2003). Forthcoming poetry books are THE FOLIATE HEAD (UK: Stanza Press) and THALIAD, a post-apocalyptic epic poem in blank verse (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2011.) She also has several novels due out in the near future: GLIMMERGLASS and MAZE OF BLOOD from Mercer. She is a native of the Carolinas currently living in a snowbank in Cooperstown, New York with her husband and three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be magically transported to a time of sorrow and truimph!, October 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wolf Pit (Hardcover)

"The Wolf Pit" does what few other examples of historical fiction do, it introduces us to characters in another time who act like characters in that time, not like modern characters in old fashioned cloths. The novel contains a range of human experiences which are woven with beautiful language and keen insight. The reader is reminded of Dickens as the foibles, cruelty, ambition and nobility of the players in the story are developed. The rich writing and examination of issues still of foremost concern (human cruelty, racism, bravery, sacrifice) will entrance the reader of literary fiction, the rich detail and authentic depictions will be of great interest to the armchair historian. While other "modern" books slide into irrelavence in their striving for hip cynacism, this novel boldly looks at the issues that should engaged thinking readers.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Civil War Novel Dazzles, September 6, 2002

By 

Corey Mesler (Memphis, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wolf Pit (Hardcover)

The narrative progresses slowly, Biblical and intense, replenishing itself with great gulps of history and panorama. Youmans writes like the child of Allan Gurganus and Toni Morrison, with Morrison's gift for sentences that carry theme and incident in their sheer craft. And, the use of the "ancient tale" structure is inspired. Youmans subtitles each chapter as if it were an age-old ballad: "Concerning wolves and wolf pits And a fight in the burning wilderness," or "Two narrative of loss, Comprising a picnic on the last careless day And a pilgrimage to harvest wands." It's oracular, touching deep wells-springs of storytelling.
The Wolf Pit resembles Cold Mountain in its use of landscape to shade its motifs and its occasionally complex éclat. You may read it for its dark tale and, at the same time, savor its rich prose.

3.0 out of 5 stars A TOUGH READ, July 26, 2009

By 

Raymond H. Mullen "Trust others, but pack yo... (Shawnee, Ok) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wolf Pit (Paperback)

This is what I would call a 'Dark, dark story of two lives that actually never meet. I would not place it in a "historical novel" category as the actual historical value was very meager. The story of Robin, the soldier and Agate, the slave girl are actually two diffirent stories altogether and the book never brings them together as I expected. The reason I call it a 'dark' read is simply that despair,tragedy,and total lack of hope fills the pages from beginning to end. The flow between the two main characters is clumsy at best. Mix all that in with mythical characters in and out of the story and you are left thinking that maybe YOU have fallen into a Wolf Pit.
The only reason I give this work even three stars is because of the poetic style of the author, not for its' contents.