Patriotic Fire

For Winston Groom, the Battle of New Orleans is part of family history; he opens by sharing what he found in the papers of his ancestor, Major Elijah Montgomery, a hero in the conflict. From there, the personal story becomes a grander canvas as Groom tells the story of Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite, who shared a love of America despite their different backgrounds. Grover Gardner reads with the urgent tones of a radio announcer, seeming a bit too impersonal early on but making the action and the drama seem more real as the scope expands. With the real-life heroes whose stories Groom rediscovers, a long-forgotten battle comes to life. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 13, 2006
Groom is a novelist (Forrest Gump
) and popular historian, with a string of well-reviewed books on war (e.g., Shrouds of Glory
). A diligent researcher, he nevertheless has no pretensions as a scholar. His strength is a remarkable ability to recreate and revitalize events long considered familiar. He's best at structuring his narrative around personalities, and the Battle of New Orleans offers him a colorful cast. Andrew Jackson was a backwoods politician wearing the epaulettes of a general. Smuggler and buccaneer Jean Laffitte rejected a British bribe to become an American patriot. Around them coalesced a hard-bitten army. Five thousand regular soldiers and militiamen from Tennessee and Kentucky; free blacks and Creole aristocrats; displaced Acadians; gunboat sailors and pirates turned artillerymen—all confronted twice their number of British, most of them veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. At stake was New Orleans and the Mississippi River basin: the developing heartland of an expanding nation. Groom is defensibly hyperbolic in describing Jackson's unexpected victory as the wellspring of a pride and patriotism that endured into the 20th century. His vivid account of how that victory was won merits a place in both public and private collections. Photos, maps.