The Deserter: Murder at Gettysburg (Hardcover)

Jane Langton is a gifted, somewhat unconventional writer who here has created strong images of the terror of the battlefield and the horror of the hospitals. And late in the book she crafts an extraordinary interlude when Homer Kelly returns to Harvard's Memorial Hall, today doing service as the freshmen dining hall, and envisions a magical dissolution of the gulf in time separating the current generation of heedless students eating sloppy joes there from the men commemorated about them in stone and stained glass, like Strong Vincent at Little Round Top and Robert Gould Shaw of Fort Wagner and Charles Russell Lowell at Cedar Creek, torn and bleeding bodies suddenly hoisted on to the tables amidst chicken fingers and Diet Coke. It is a powerful, eloquent moment, calling upon all of us to remember and understand.

A typical Homer Kelly novel pretty much gives the mystery away in the first few pages, and the focus is on how Homer or his wife Mary will find out what really happened. They usually bumble around quite a bit, and their efforts are more amusing than brilliant. What makes most of the novels appealing is their rich intellectual development of an interesting thinker and period in time.

In The Deserter, the excellent aspects of that approach are retained while interesting new aspects are added. I was very much impressed with these changes.

In the Deserter, the reader is presented with the same mystery that Mary Kelly has: What shameful thing happened to her great great grandfather, Seth Morgan that no one in the family wants to talk about? In the course of pursuing that mystery, Ms. Langton adds a second one for Ida Morgan, Seth's pregnant wife, during the Civil War. Where and how is he? Ida reads that he's listed as missing in action at Gettysburg, and wants to find out what happened.

The story has several narrators including Homer, Mary and Ida. In addition, you'll meet and listen to the story of Private Otis Pike, a member of the Harvard Class of 1860 and fellow Hasty Pudding Club member along with Seth and several of the other officers in the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at Gettysburg.

The book is filled with fascinating details of how the fallen Harvard men were remembered and honored by their school, the conduct at Gettysburg for this infantry unit, how the dead and wounded were handled, and the records involving the unit. Much of the details involving Gettysburg will evoke The Red Badge of Courage for you. The details are enriched by period photographs, reproductions of period documents and quotes from famous people involved in the Civil War. In a final note, Ms. Langton tells you where all of these people and details were derived.

As a story telling device, Ida's search for Seth is marvelous and provides many interesting insights into war's aftermath.

The book will have special appeal to those whose relatives died in the Civil War as well as to Harvard people who have stared up at those stone tablets in Memorial Hall.

After you finish this outstanding book, I suggest that you take the time to find out more about one of your relatives who is no longer with us. Naturally, if you have one about whom the family tries to avoid talking, you may bump into a fascinating story. But feel free to pick someone whom the family is proud of. Undoubtedly, you'll learn something important. Good luck in the archives and scrapbooks!