“ The South of our fathers and grandfathers, the last of those worlds of honor and pride and arrogance that will be no more, soon to be crisscrossed by railroads and telegraph wires and studded with mills and belching dark smoke…Had they not confused honor with slavery…at the banquet of death being prepared for the South, there was no seat for the goddess Reason…”

Doesn’t this make you long for the realities of Foghorn Leghorn the cartoon rooster? This novel of the War Between the States is written in the style of the little lamented Bulwer Lytton, he of “the dark and stormy night”. The characters are stereotypes, the dialogue reeks, and the reader is asked to suspend disbelief far too many times to sustain any credibility.

Joel Devereux is one of four sons of a patriarch who resembles Tennessee Williams’ Big Daddy or the despot of Mandingo. At the outbreak of the war he is sent to Spain to open a branch of the family bank while his younger brother is sent into the military to die in battle. As to the older brothers, one is dim-witted and dull while the other is a clone of his father. Their only sister escapes the miserable family (the mother died out of desperation, no doubt) by marrying a Yankee cad who winds up on President Lincoln’s cabinet-then deserts her for his mistress. She is a complete harridan.

Joel returns to his true love, Susannah Goode (the significance of the name will soon be obvious) the beautiful niece of the saintly local missionary to the Cherokee. Susannah lived in her mother’s brothel until her uncle snatched her back to live with him and bring God to the pagan people. Like her Biblical namesake, people said evil things of her but she is true blue, even if she does like to remember her first tryst with Joel in a frigid country chapel.

These utterly shallow, hollow, predictable, oleaginous characters realize that their culture and values are “gone with the wind” and set out to rectify the situation. The evil Devereux clan steals a load of gold and hopes to escape to Europe while Joel and Susannah get on their white horses and attempt to take the gold north, free slaves, advise Abe Lincoln, and any other self-righteous deed they can commit.

Don’t bother with this tale. My advice is to make your own Way Upcountry and hope that no one comes after you. Here in Alabama we don’t take kindly to folks like these.

--Jane Davis