Tag: historical fiction

The Return of Captain John Emmett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller is a haunting story of lost men during a lost time–a story the lost generation of soldiers who only semi-returned from the trench warfare of World War I, and the between-the-wars limbo that was the 1920’s.

Today we call it “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” or PTSD, as if giving things a name makes them easier to live with. In the immediate aftermath of WWI, it was simply called “shell-shock”, as though the shorter name meant it could be dismissed that much more easily.

Captain John Emmett returned from his war, whole in body, but not in spirit. He coped badly with the war, and even worse with the peace. His family institutionalized him after he attacked another veteran. When he escaped from the sanitarium, he committed suicide and left no note. His sister, thinking that he was improving, and certain that there must have been something more to her brother’s death, enlists one of his old school friends to investigate the circumstances of Emmett’s suicide.

Laurence Bartram came home from his war as shell-shocked as Emmett, but didn’t quite reach the institutional stage. He returned from his war a widower, his wife having died in childbirth on the day that his unit made it last assault. Wracked with guilt, he has been unable to restart a new life in peacetime. Mary Emmett’s request to investigate her brother’s death gives him a new purpose.

Bartram discoveries uncover mystery upon mystery. At first he believes he is looking into an unfortunate, but ultimately simple, suicide. It would not have been uncommon. But as he delves deeper, his investigations lead from peacetime back to the war he left behind. And from suicide to murder.

In peacetime it was called shell-shock. In wartime, it was called cowardice. On the front lines, an officer convicted of cowardice in the face of the enemy was court martialed and shot. In the British Army only three officers faced such firing squads during WWI. Emmett was the officer in charge of one, and he botched it. The war is over and all the men from that squad are being picked off, one by one. Those that survived the war, someone is making sure that they don’t survive the peace.

Escape Rating B+: After a slow start, this one grabbed me at the end and didn’t let go. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. The mixture of real history with fiction makes the story compelling. Also the touch of “real fiction”. One of the characters is reading Agatha Christie, and commenting on the similarities. But the pathos is in the characters of Emmett, Mary Emmett and Bartram. War is hell. Those young men had no idea what they were in for, and even less what to do when they got out. Combined with the incredible networking influence of the “Old School Ties”, both literal and figurative, and what happened to someone who didn’t have them. The historical notes at the end put the story in context. For fiction, this is too real. And war is still hell.

Riding on the City of New Orleans

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books

There are a lot of songs and stories that ride to the city of New Orleans, including the famous one about the train. In Steve Goodman‘s classic, covered by Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson and a host of others, the train doesn’t actually arrive by the time the song ends. It’s going to get there “by morning.”

Whenever a story is set in New Orleans, the city is more than just the setting, it’s also a character. Anyone who has been mesmerized by Louis’ story in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire will attest to that. There is no place in America with the cultural gumbo of history that would otherwise be able to make Louis’ and Lestat’s story fascinate the reader.

But Anne Rice‘s love affair with New Orleans is reflected in some of her other work. One of her earliest stand alone novels is The Feast of All Saints. The story is about the gens de couleur libre, the free people of color who lived in New Orleans before the Civil War. It is a society that seems uniquely part of New Orleans history, and that most people know nothing about. The writing is as compelling as Interview, but what fascinates is how fragile the world of the gens de couleur was. Everything existed on sufferance, and when that sufferance was strained or torn, disaster struck.

Part of what makes New Orleans such a unique part of America is the different cultures that have held sway over that port city. The French, then the Spanish, back to the French and finally the relatively new American Republic bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1801. When the U.S. took over New Orleans, there was a clash of cultures between the planters and the new Americans who came to the city and the Territory. Culture clashes make for great stories.

Barbara Hambly’s historical mystery series is set at the time of that cultural clash. Benjamin January returned to New Orleans from Paris in 1833, after the death of his wife. Ben January trained as a surgeon in Paris, but he makes his living as a piano player in New Orleans. Why? Because he is A Free Man of Color, as the title of the first book in the series names him. He can only practice medicine during the annual cholera epidemic, when most of the white doctors flee the city. But January’s insider/outsider perspective allows him to see into the heart of what is unsaid in every facet of New Orleans society. The new Americans, particularly one policeman, discover that his ability to see into all parts of Creole society, areas that the Americans have no entry into, may be useful in solving crime. But it’s the view into Benjamin’s world that is compelling. The latest book in this series, The Shirt on his Back, just came out in June.

For a different perspective on historic New Orleans, David Fulmer‘s Chasing the Devil’s Tail takes place during a different clash. His Valentine St. Cyr is a private detective in the fabled Storyville district in the early 1900s. He investigates the death of a musician just at the point when the blues was giving birth to jazz.

Katrina also gets its due. In The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, a history professor receives a map of New Orleans. But it isn’t just a map of streets and tourist destinations. It’s a map of historical moments. And if the professor can manage to visit all of the “moments” and do all of the right things, he can undo the biggest mistake of his life–leaving his lover to die amid the devastation that Katrina made out of New Orleans.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about a man who was born old and lived backwards, was originally set in Baltimore. Made into a movie post-Katrina, it was set in New Orleans, using the oncoming storm as an integral part of the frame. The story as written is quite short, and available free at Project Gutenberg. The movie was much greater than the sum of its original parts.

The lyrics in my head are from an old rock classic by Poco, Heart of the Night. Something about the words and the music still evoke New Orleans for me. The song compares an ex-lover to the city on Lake Pontchartrain. And as the song rightly says, “she’s so full of surprises”. She’s always been full of stories, too.