Landsman

Based on the little-known fact that 3,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Confederacy during our Civil War, Melman's novel tells the story of Elias Abrams, a young Jew alone in New Orleans who enlists in a Louisiana regiment after being accused of a serious crime. The story is in the style and spirit of COLD MOUNTAIN, though often coarser. At the center is Abrams's passion for a girl he's never met, who wrote a letter "to a soldier." Daniel Oreskes's Southern accents wander around the map a good deal, but they are suitably atmospheric, and unlikely to discourage anyone with a taste for this kind of adventure/romance in which the gore is red, the language is blue, and the grit is the size of gravel. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 19, 2007
A barely literate hard-bitten gambler and petty criminal, Elias Abrams, the 20-year-old cardsharp hero of Melman's solid debut, flees hometown New Orleans (and a bogus murder charge), joins the Confederate Army and realizes "every circumstance of his life now conspires to kill him." He survives the infantry as he had the city—using his wiles, card skills and fists—until his colonel hands over an envelope containing a charming missive from Nora Bloom, a young New Orleans maiden who wrote a support-the-troops letter at the urging of her rabbi. Unexpectedly stirred, Elias begins a correspondence and finds himself obsessively fantasizing about her. A battlefield injury leads to a furlough during which he returns to the city to meet both Nora (he falls in love) and cronies from his seedy past, who use his new flame as leverage to draw him into a sinister plot. Readers will find no fault with the colorful portrait of Civil War–time New Orleans, its squalid underworld and small Jewish enclave, or Melman's portrayal of army life (more hurry-up-and-wait than cannons and sabers). There is certainly no shortage of Civil War fiction; this is one of the better offerings.