ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250033
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
Hospital near `smart' road
Reviewed by MARY ANN JOHNSON
THE NIGHT BATH. By James Tucker. Backbone. $4.95.
In the summer of 1855 the Daily Dispatch of Richmond reported the opening of a resort at Montgomery White Sulphur Springs in the Devils Den Valley of Virginia, near Ellett Valley. German artist Edward Beyer, known to those in the area for his renderings of Virginia landscapes, called it "the most beautiful place in the mountains." During the Civil War the resort was converted into a hospital, and in December 1893 it housed 873 patients. After the war, it was restored as a resort and attracted many visitors until, in 1903, it was destroyed by flood and fire. Legend has it that the destruction was wrought by a man-beast ghost.
James Tucker, a retired lawyer in Pulaski County, tells this legend through the character of a wounded Confederate soldier who enters the domain of the man-beast and the accompanying, beautiful panther-woman. The legend itself is a short, satisfying tale, well-told with simplicity and originality of description: "My skeleton-like figure is Death's card of introduction."
Tucker's message actually lies in the factual information included at the end in which he bemoans the intent "to smear God's country with a state-of-the-art `smart' road - all in order to save outlanders and scalawags a few minutes in travel time between Roanoke and Blacksburg." Yes, the site of Montgomery White Sulphur Springs and its Confederate cemetery is in the area of the proposed smart road, although how close and what effect the one might have on the other is not clear. Tucker's story, however, makes an intriguing point.
This book is available through Backbone Publishing Co., P.O. Box 504, Newbern, Va. 24126.
Mary Ann Johnson is book page editor.
Northern Virginia battle revisited
Reviewed by ROBERT P. HILLDRUP
CHANCELLORSVILLE. By Stephen W. Sears. Houghton Mifflin. $35.
In an effort to meet the seemingly endless demand for popular books on the Civil War, writers are sifting the previously explored sands of battlefields and biographies in hopes of finding nuggets. Such is the case with Stephen Sears' "Chancellorsville," which is at least the third major book on that battle that I have seen in the last four years.
That is not to say that there is anything wrong with Sears' work. A prolific and accomplished writer about the war, Sears knows that Chancellorsville - like Gettysburg - doesn't need any added dramatization. He lets the story tell itself, the incidents flowing together like the scenes and acts of high drama, the characters successful and doomed and sometimes - in Stonewall Jackson's case - both at once.
This is a book both for the reader seeking an introduction to the battle and one who wants to return to familiar ground for a refresher.
The time, of course, is the spring of 1863, and the Confederates are once again strung out along the Rappahannock-Rapidan complex from Fredericksburg west, facing the Union invaders halfway between Washington and Richmond. The Union has yet another new commander, Joe Hooker, and is preparing to crush Robert E. Lee's smaller force of Confederates.
But in a cardinal violation of tactics, Lee divides his smaller force, sending Jackson looping south, west and then north again in a day's long march to fall upon the Union flank near dusk, crushing it and inflicting massive casualties. It is here that Jackson is accidentally wounded by his troops, to die later from infection.
It is a victory which leaves the South just short of the truly crushing triumph that might have won both peace and liberty of the Southern states.
Sears' story does not break any new ground. It does show a testy side of Lee that is sometimes neglected, and it takes the traditionally unsympathetic view of Col. Emory Best and his Georgians who - their supporters say - held Jackson's flank early on and made possible Jackson's magnificent flanking movement.
Revisiting Chancellorsville through Sears' account is rather like revisiting Gettysburg. It is impossible to return too often to experience, even vicariously, some of the most magnificent and bloody heroism of the American heritage.
Robert P. Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
Potboiler based on oral WWII history
Reviewed by RICHARD RAYMOND III
CRISIS IN THE PACIFIC. By Gerald Astor. Donald I. Fine Books. $27.95.
There is a word commonly applied to literary works published not to improve knowledge but to earn a few dollars for author and publisher. The word is "potboiler," and it accurately describes this book.
First among its many deep and pervasive flaws is the title, misleading and ambiguous. Whatever else the fight to hold or retake the Philippines might have been, a "crisis" it was not. (For a true crisis, try the Battles of Midway or Guadalcanal - either, given the slightest reverse twist of fate, might well have been a Japanese victory, with consequences too dire to contemplate, even at the range of half- century.)
That being said, one must inquire how well the author tells his story of defense and liberation. Gerald Astor is basically a reporter, with a newsman's turn of phrase. The story is told best when he allows the participants to relate in their own words the tragic, heroic tale of struggle and sacrifice.
But one can't help but notice the lack of page notes and the skimpy bibliography. On page after page, veterans are quoted briefly or at length, without a single note to back up Astor's choppy prose. In contrast, a book as long as his - say, Bruce Catton's "Never Call Retreat (and Catton was a newsman before he turned scholar) - shows 44 pages of endnotes and 18 pages of condensed bibliography, against 21/2 pages for Astor's.
As to maps, where Catton shows 14 pages of large-and small-scale drawings of both strategic and tactical areas, Astor has but three, none very detailed, and more than somewhat misleading as to dates, localities and actions of forces engaged.
His "roll call" of first-person narratives also is much flawed, including as it does unattributed excerpts from journals and notes, not live interviews with aging veterans of the campaigns he describes. Far too much space is devoted to extraneous matters, such as operations of the 37th Infantry Division on New Guinea. His text suffers from poor editing, with numerous misspellings and inaccuracies in the index.
In sum, and to repeat - this is a "potboiler," entertaining enough for the undemanding weekend reader, but essentially valueless for the serious military student.
Richard Raymond is a former Marine officer.
Confederate Navy
Reviewed by NELSON HARRIS
GRAY THUNDER: Exploits of the Confederate States Navy. By R. Thomas Campbell. Burd Street Press. $19.95.
"Gray Thunder" is a compilation of the great Civil War naval battles as viewed through the perspective of the Confederate Navy. It is the author's purpose to relate the neglected history of naval warfare which has long been overshadowed by the voluminous research of the Civil War armies and their land campaigns.
Most interesting is the author's research into the ingenuity exhibited by the Confederacy in building 150 warships, many of them nothing more than converted riverboats. All of this was occurring while the North captured many of the South's vital shipyard communities such as Norfolk and New Orleans.
While "Gray Thunder" is by no means a comprehensive history of the Confederate Navy, it does introduce the reader to the important battles and personalities which made up the "lifeline of the Confederacy."
Nelson Harris is minister of Ridgewood Baptist Church.
Can the U.S. leave Bosnia?
Reviewed by BOB WILLIS
BALKAN ODYSSEY. By David Owen. Harcourt Brace & Co. $25.
Initially, NATO's mission in Bosnia was to end in December, but, as Clinton acknowledged before the election, American troops will not be able to pack up and go home by then. What, really, are the chances that the former Yugoslavia can be left to its own devices? Slim to none, judging from David Owen's description of his tortuous attempts to negotiate some kind of peace among the religious and ethnic factions there.
In 1992, this prominent British politician was named co-chairman of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. For more than two years thereafter, Owen and former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance labored to find common ground among the various warring forces.
"Nothing is simple in the Balkans," Owen writes of an area much bloodied by the nationalities and religious groups who have inhabited it over the centuries. "History pervades everything and the complexities confound even the most careful study. Never before in over 30 years of public life have I had to operate in such a climate of dishonor, propaganda and dissembling."
Owen stuck with an unenviable and thankless task. He would be berated for coming up with a peace proposal that critics said sanctioned ethnic cleansing by Serbs. He and Vance were undercut by the Clinton administration, which would broker its own, rather similar, plan at Dayton two years afterward - two years in which thousands more would die.
Owen's book is not the kind of handbook that hurried Americans might prefer. Still, it should be perused by anyone who seeks more than a rudimentary understanding of the strivings and rivalries that afflict the Balkans.
Bob Willis is a retired associate editor of the editorial page.
Woman spies in Civil War
Reviewed by ROBERT ALOTTA
A YANKEE SPY IN RICHMOND: The Civil War Diary of "Crazy Bet" Van Lew. Edited by David D. Ryan. Stackpole Books. $22.95.
Every year more books are published that tend to revise our understanding of the Civil War. Not all of these books focus attention on battles and battlefields.
In this one Elizabeth Van Lew, born to a prominent family in Richmond, had a childhood experience that traumatized her and forged a new direction for her life. While a young girl, she heard the story about a slave slave mother who died from a broken heart when separated from her infant daughter at a slave sale. Elizabeth became an abolitionist in the Capital of the Confederacy. She couldn't openly oppose slavery, so she did the next best thing: She spied on the Confederacy for the Union.
To cover her actions, she became a "crazy lady," walking the streets of Richmond in old, sloppy clothes and singing or mumbling to herself. All the while she kept a secret diary, a diary that David Ryan finally brings to the surface. How she kept her secrets and communicated to the North is the material of which movies are made.
Robert Alotta is an author and historian in Harrisonburg.
Why Lincoln grew a beard
Reviewed by MARY SUTTON SKUTT
MR. LINCOLN'S WHISKERS. By Karen B. Winnick. Boyds Mill Press. $15.95.
With paintings that give the look and feel of the 19th century, Karen Winnick has written and illustrated a true story. Grace Bedell, 11 years old, lived in Westfield, N.Y., when her father brought home a campaign poster of Abraham Lincoln. She thought Lincoln's face looked sad and too thin. While looking at his picture in the moonlight, noticing how the shadows gave his face more fullness, Grace decided to write a letter suggesting that he grow a beard.
Lincoln answered her letter, thanked her for the idea and even stopped in Westfield on his way to Washington, D.C., to see how she liked his new look.
Children will welcome this book. It might encourage some to speak up with their ideas for change. Grownups need a little help sometimes, too.
Mary Sutton Skutt is a writer living in Rockbridge County.
LENGTH: Long : 208 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Cover of "Chancellorsville."by CNB