When I began to write my historical novel Brookhaven, my jumping off point was a family story. My father often told me about my great-grandfather, Samuel Young, and his Civil War experience.
The story was this: Samuel was 13 when the war began in April of 1861. He was too young to enlist, so he signed up as a messenger boy. He had been in that position for a good deal of the war. When the war ended with the surrender of General Lee’s Army at Appomattox Courthouse to General Grant and the surrender of General Johnston’s army to General Sherman at Greensboro, Samuel found himself in the East, with no way to get home except by foot.
The story went on,
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Photograph: My paternal great-grandparents, Samuel Franklin Young and Octavia Montgomery Young.
I grew up in the Deep South of the 1950s and 1960s. Social change wasn’t only in the air; it was in the streets and, more importantly, in the city buses, the dime store lunch counter, and the public schools. The Civil War had ended a century before, but it seemed like it was still being fought in the civil rights battles that competed for newspaper space with the growing war in Vietnam.
The school board of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans, anticipating the racial integration of schools, had segregated the high school student populations by gender – boys went to one school, girls to another. The first year of integration saw riots, fights, and protests, the more violent ones at the boys’ high school but including the girls’ school to a lesser degree. Federal marshals became an in-school presence.
For a very long time, no one in my father’s family – father, aunts, uncles, grandmother, or cousins – knew why the family Bible contained a death notice. The name was Jarvis Seale; the only thing the listing had was the date of his death. Who was this person? Why was he considered so important that my great-grandfather, who’d penned every entry in the records, had included him. My father guessed Jarvis might have been a distant cousin, or a close friend.
It was only in the years I’d been doing reading and research for my historical novel Brookhaven that I discovered the answer, and then it was simply by happenstance. The key was the date of his death.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Ah, those Valentine Day candy hearts, with those little messages that read like they anticipated text messages decades later. “Luv U.” “U R Mine.” I was surprised to learn that they originated during the Civil War. See “Hub Wafers: A Yankee Delight” at Emerging Civil War.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all over the media – stock market drops, worries about impact on jobs, already beginning to redefine industries. More than a year ago, a former colleague at work asked me if I’d embraced ChatGPT. I surprised her when I shook my head no. “Not for me,” I said. “I think I’d prefer to give up writing altogether.” AI popped all over my inbox this week. Writing coach Ann Kroeker asks whose voice is on your page. Writer Paul Kingsnorth sees it as the latest manifestation of what he calls “the machine,” and tells writers to oppose it. And Samuel D. James takes a look at that latest AI article that went viral.
Reviewers have had kind things to say about my novelBrookhaven. Here are a few of them.
Outstanding novel about the Civil War
“Though this is a novel, the author has included a lot of historical information about the Civil War times that amplifies the horror and destruction of this brutal war and its aftermath. The reader will find inspiration in the determination of the main characters. The book offers something for almost every reader-- historical insights, a bit of romance, family dynamics but, most of all, the book highlights the indomitable human spirit to survive the tragedy and almost unimaginable hardship brought on by the Civil War.”
Beautifully written. Impossible to put down.
“This wonder of a Civil War novel captivated me from the first page. Set ostensibly in 1915 when the only female reporter for the NEW YORK WORLD is sent south to learn details about a mysterious Confederate spy, author Glynn Young spins a family saga that details the heartache and loss not only of the war specifically but the broken relationships and twisted lives that came out of those devastating years.
“What begins as a mystery to solve quickly evolves into an elderly man’s own story of the nation’s worst war. Set primarily in the town of Brookhaven, Mississippi, and the homes of a family still caught in the grasp of the war's aftermath, the story moves back and forth between 1915 and the 1860s, taking readers on a personal tour of troop movement in the eastern border states, battles of Gettysburg and Wilderness, General Lee’s surrender, and ultimately, a very satisfying finale.
“As I read, the book and its characters felt very real. Not my ancestors, certainly, but people I learned to cheer for and care about as the ways of war and the world had their effect. That turned out to be not too surprising, as the author wrote an end-of-the-book note that BROOKHAVEN was inspired by tales he heard from his own family as he was growing up.
Finally, marvel of marvels for people like me who always “want to know more” after I’ve finished a historical novel, author Young provides readers with a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book that ranges from general Civil War books, to books about the war in Mississippi, to letters and memoirs that offer personal insights into those years.”
Beautifully told, fascinating in historical detail
Glynn Young has crafted a beautiful, engrossing story that shines with historical details. I've always loved historical fiction and Brookhaven does not disappoint. The many twists and turns in the story made this one a page-turner for me. The author's note at the end of the book relates how the book was inspired by an old family story, which I found to be so interesting. I could tell by the way the author handled the characters with such integrity that this story holds a special place in his heart. This book kept me company over the holidays and through a winter snowstorm. It was a very good companion.
The name John Fremont (1813-1890) evokes images of Manifest Destiny, exploration of the western United States, the first Republican candidate for President (18560, and the separation of California from Mexico. Less well-known is his very brief role in the American Civil War.
It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.
Poetry
The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice.
I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels.
Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.
Art and Architecture
Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.
I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)
Civil War
Last December, my historical novel Brookhavenwas published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)
Mystery
Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)
I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.
And that’s the list for 2025.
Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.
As I began to write the manuscript that became my historical novel Brookhaven, I knew I would use a 19th century poet as a kind of infusion into the story. three poets in particularly were closely associated with the Civil War – Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Sidney Lanier. A fourth – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – was a possibility.
Whitman is the poet today we connect to the war, but he wasn’t by the people who lived the war. Herman Melville was considered by the North to be THE poet of war during the time it raged, but he would be problematic for my novel, because it was largely set in the South. In the South, Sidney Lanier only became “the Civil War poet” years after the war, and particularly after his death in 1881, and his poems were less about the war and more about the postwar period. But to use Lanier’s poems was tempting.
In the end, I went for Longfellow, and for several reasons. He was hugely popular before the war. His oldest son enlisted and was seriously wounded. His wife died from a tragic accident during the war. And while he had been an ardent abolitionist, Longfellow was among the few who were horrified at the human devastation wrought by the war, so much so that he regretted the role he had played in advancing radical abolition.
A considerable portion of my historical novel Brookhaven is set in the last year of the Civil War, and yet the novel only covers a few of the momentous events – the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse, the final siege of Petersburg, Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, and Johnston’s surrender to Sherman near Greensboro.
Indirectly, the novel covers Grierson’s Raid through Alabama, the fall of Atlanta and Sherman’s march to the sea, and the political and social chaos that followed. People lived through those times; my own ancestors (on both sides of my family) lived through it.
You can’t research and write a novel about the Civil War, or anything else set in the mid-19th century, without quickly running into the songs people sang. As I researched what would eventually become my novel Brookhaven, I came across war songs, anthems, sung by the Irish who came to America and enlisted, hymns, songs by the home folk, and more.
I went looking for a book about music in the Civil War, and I found ta small volume published by the Library of America in 2010, Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America’s First Great Popular Songs. It’s a small, eye-opening gem. I discovered that songs I learned in elementary school had been around for more than a century.
What will, or should be, remembered as the worst prison in American History is Andersonville, the prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia where the Confederates sent tens of thousands of Union soldiers. Conditions were terrible; thousands of prisoners died of starvation and disease. The only Confederate tried and executed after the Civil War was the commandant of Andersonville – and he was, interestingly enough, a native Austrian. Brian Matthew Jordan at Emerging Civil War has a reflection: “A Thousand Words a Battle: Andersonville.”
I can remember when silence at libraries was not only the rule, but it was strictly enforced. And it didn’t matter whether it was the local branch of the library system, your junior high or high school library, or the big university libraries I had access to growing up in New Orleans. Times have changed. Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker asks “Why Are Quiet Spaces Disappearing?”
Jacob Savage at the Free Press has a different question. He recently took his family to an animal park in Utah, and then they went on to the zoo in Los Angeles. The contrast couldn’t have been more striking. Jacob’s question, which is more of a statement: “Why Blue States Can’t Have Nice Things.”
I debated long and hard about including something this week. But the gaslighting by what we call the national media, not to mention my own hometown newspaper, finally became too great. The National Security Advisor, the FBI, and Sen. Charles Grassley began releasing previously classified documents about Russiagate. The media decided it wasn’t news; nothing to see here, so move along, move along, worry more about Epstein. The media, however, was mostly complicit in what happened back in 2016 and 2017, so I understand the gaslighting. Matt Taibbi at Racket News has had the most consistent and in-depth coverage. See the Culture entry below for a raft of stories.
For the past few months, our church pastors have been preaching a series on the Gospel as seen in the life of David. We’re nearing the end of the series. The sermons have focused on some of the highlights of David’s life, including his anointing by the prophet Samuel, the confrontation with Goliath, the growing animosity of King Saul, the friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, David becoming king, and Bathsheba.
Last Sunday, the sermon centered on the end of the rebellion by David’s son Absalom (2 Samuel 18). The army gathered by Absalom has been defeated and scattered; Absalom himself, trying to escape, is caught by his trademark flowing hair in the branches of a tree. He’s dangling there when found by David’s general, who wastes no time in ignoring David’s earlier command to spare Absolom’s life and putting the young man to the sword.
I’m familiar with the account. I’ve read it many times, my attention caught by the image of Absalom dangling from the tree limb. It is a truism that you can read a book of the Bible, a passage, a chapter, and even a verse scores of times and not see something that will suddenly catch your attention during an additional reading.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Photograph by Filip Zrnzevic via Unsplash. Used with permission.
In my novel Brookhaven, the teenaged Sam McClure has three fateful encounters with John Haygood. The three happen in successive years, and each of the three involve Civil War military operations.
I was reminded of this when Emerging Civil War posted articles on two of the three operations a week apart this month.
The first encounter happens during Grierson’s Raid, an operation ordered by Ulysses S. Grant to distract the Confederates during his siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Some 1,700 Union cavalrymen rode through Mississippi, starting at the Tennessee border and finishing in Union-occupied Louisiana. They tore up railroad track and caused considerable havoc, but more importantly, they kept the Confederates focused away from Grant transferring his army across the river to besiege Vicksburg from the east.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Illustration: Major Benjamin Grierson and his cavalry make a triumphant entry into Union-controlled Baton Rouge at the conclusion of their famous raid through Mississippi in 1863. (Library of Congress)
