The Wreckage of Eden

April 2, 2018
In the fifth installment of his American Novels series, Lock (A Fugitive in Walden Woods) imagines the relationship between a fictional U.S. Army chaplain and Emily Dickinson. Chaplain Robert Winter, by his own admission, was rarely alone with Emily. He met her as she was sitting outside and studying botany in Amherst, Mass., and was immediately struck by the young woman’s wit, insight, and intelligence. Though Robert’s feelings quickly turn romantic, Emily rejects his advances and continues her life of isolation and poetry. Robert, meanwhile, goes on to serve as a chaplain in the Mexican War and the Mormon Rebellion, his faith crumbling as he witnesses unthinkable atrocities. After the war he marries and has a child, then briefly befriends Abraham Lincoln. But no matter how far he travels, his mind is never far from Amherst and Emily. Lock’s prose is ethereal but never overwrought (of war, he writes: “gray earth, gray skies, gray bread, gray smoke, gray snow, a hacking cough, musket fire, a fearsome noise like a twig’s snapping, which might have been caused by a bushwhacker or a femur shattered by a minie ball”). The lively passages of Emily’s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery from the previous novel. Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.

Starred review from March 15, 2018

Eden, the young United States, is indeed wrecked in this historical novel by award-winning author Lock, the fifth in his "American Novels" series after A Fugitive in Walden Woods. The narrator, army chaplain Robert Winter, has served the spiritual needs of soldiers during the Mexican American War, the Mormon Rebellion, and, finally, the Raid on Harpers Ferry. After seeing so much carnage, he is profoundly disillusioned and eventually loses his Lutheran faith as well as faith in the country. Perceptive and contemplative, Robert recounts his thoughts and experiences mainly through letters to his unrequited love, poet Emily Dickinson, also telling her how encounters with Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and Ralph Waldo Emerson have shaped his life. VERDICT Bringing the 1840-60s to life with shimmering prose, Lock depicts Robert's emotions as he tries to keep a steady head amid the growing tensions between slave owners and abolitionists and cope with the violence he witnesses and ultimately commits.--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018
A man with a long connection to Emily Dickinson loses his faith in the midst of battle.Narrator Robert Winter is a chaplain in the United States Army in the mid-19th century--giving him a firsthand view of the fracturing of society leading to the Civil War. The novel is structured as Robert's correspondence with Dickinson, whose ideals and aesthetics serve as a contrast to his own loss of faith. Lock does a fine job of making Winter feel like a man of his time: Though he's progressive by the standards of a white man of his day, his blind spots are pointed out by some, including a young Samuel Clemens. As he moves from conflict to conflict, Robert's own mind becomes more tortured. "There is no way to tell of it in words," he writes, regarding war, before offering up a grotesque metaphor. The novel is enlivened by signs that Robert is, while not an unreliable narrator, possibly a selective one. Several major life events happen to him in passing between two of the book's sections, and his own (chronologically) first encounter with Dickinson isn't revealed on the page until a good distance into the book--which, in turn, prompts the reader to re-evaluate some of the pair's earlier interactions. Although this is the story of Robert's growing loss of faith, he shows a propensity for using Jesus' life as a metaphor for his own. As with each installment of Lock's The American Novels series (A Fugitive in Walden Woods, 2017, etc.), this work stands on its own entirely well, though readers of his prior books will find connections both thematic and literal.Lock deftly tells a visceral story of belief and conflict, with abundant moments of tragedy and transcendence along the way.

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May 15, 2018
The fifth in Lock's consistently excellent American Novel series (A Fugitive in Walden Woods, 2017) follows army chaplain Robert Winter as he navigates the tumultuous mid-nineteenth century while serving in the Mexican War and, later, at the Mormon Rebellion. He has witnessed man's inhumanity to man, and his faith is challenged, but he retains in his heart a tenderness for a young, spirited woman back in Amherst, Emily Dickinson. Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue. Emily describes her seemingly chaotic verse, Ecstasy is ungrammatical, and never more so than in our faithless age. History buffs will relish Robert's adventures as his path intersects those of such notable figures as a young Samuel Clemens, aspiring politician Abraham Lincoln, actor John Wilkes Booth, and abolitionist John Brown. Although Emily does not return Robert's affections, Lock skillfully hints at the exuberant and tempestuous mind that will produce hundreds of poems, most of which were not published until after her death.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)