Wilderness

July 23, 2012
War and remembrance combine powerfully in this rugged debut novel of the horrors of combat and the fierceness of nature. Thirty-five years after the Civil War, Abel Truman, a reclusive, isolated survivor of the cauldron of fire that raged in the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, where he fought as a Confederate soldier and lost the use of his left arm, begins a journey home. In a tone that owes much, sometimes too much, to Hemingway, he braves the violence of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula landscape and people as he ruminates on his losses and returns from the outer limits of civilization. Weller’s depiction of the old soldier’s journey through memory is the strongest part of the book, with long, vivid passages that evoke the sensory assault of combat and its aftermath. The small details of the battlefield, from the field hospital where his friends died to his glimpse of “a dented tuba lying lost in the middle of a swampy little creek and loose horses too numerous for counting” are potent Civil War prose, a respectful echo of Stephen Crane and Ambrose Bierce. Less successful are the scenes near the end of his trek, where race and violence and kindness jumble together in a murky variety of redemption and sacrifice. Agent: JET Literary Associates.

September 1, 2012
A wounded Civil War veteran reckons with thieves, racism and the torments of his past. Weller's debut novel alternates between 1864 and 1899 to follow the life of Abel Truman, who fought for the Confederacy before moving to the Pacific Northwest. Much of the action in the Civil War chapters focuses on the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, a particularly bloody affair, and Weller relates the action in disarmingly visceral detail, blasted faces, spilled bowels and all. That violence is paralleled by Abel's own unhappy past, in which his infant daughter and wife died in quick succession. In the 1899 chapters, Abel is living an isolated life with his dog before he falls afoul of a pair of thieves working their way down the Pacific Coast. The alternating chapters essentially make for two redemption stories--the first a chronicle of Abel's awareness of the folly of racism and the futility of war, the second a tale of human capacity for not just survival, but heroism. Weller relates all this in flagrantly Faulkner-ian language, thick with nature imagery and long sentences that strive to swallow the world whole: "The sun was bright in the leafed trees, upon grass slick with caught rain, and the man-filled road was as protean and indomitable as a river flowing seaward." Weller's command of this style is sometimes shaky, at times obscuring plot points or overdramatizing particular moments. And the linguistic finery serves a fairly simplistic fable on kindness and brotherhood. (Abel Truman's very name hints at how morally uncomplicated the protagonist is.) But Weller's finer moments are marked by some spectacular sentences: He finds an unlikely beauty in the violence-torn settings, as when a bullet passes a soldier's neck "like the first quick kiss of a shy girl." A familiar war story, but told with verve and sturdy, biblical intonations.

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Starred review from August 1, 2012

Debut author Weller (winner of Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers) alternates between two stretches in the life of Abel Truman: his weeks as a Confederate soldier in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, when his arm was lost and his friends killed, and the harrowing stretch in 1899 when aging Abel abandons his hermit lifestyle on the coast of Washington State to take one last try at redemption, but encounters interference from some depraved dog fighters. Weller vividly paints epic events against the backdrop of beautiful but brutal landscapes. It's a story brimming with compassion for those--including Abel, his wife and child, his soldier companions, his dog, newly freed slaves, Chinese immigrants, and a mixed-race couple--caught in fateful, savage events. VERDICT Spanning the continent, this tragic tale is the best Civil War novel since Cold Mountain. It's an important, compelling book for fans of literate historical fiction, dog lovers, or true believers in the resilience of the human spirit. Only those who can't handle extreme violence should stay away. [See Prepub Alert, 3/18/12.]--Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA

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