Walking To Gatlinburg: A Novel
Reader warning: You are either going to like this book a lot or not at all. For those of you who prefer traditional Civil War historical fiction, this may not suit your taste; however, if you are inclined to enjoy a rich epic with a cast of interesting and colorful characters, then Walking To Gatlinburg may be for you. This novel finds more of a kindred spirit with Robert Olmstead’s Coal Black Horse than Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels. I have been a Howard Frank Mosher fan since I read his bestselling and award-winning A Stranger in the Kingdom. Mosher is best known for novels set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Walking to Gatlinburg is his first venture in the Civil War. It focuses on a young man, Morgan, searching for his lost brother, Pilgrim, who may have been killed during the Battle of Gettysburg. While redemption of sorts ends the novel, Mosher paints a portrait of an apocalyptic American landscape scarred by the twin evils of civil and total war. Much of the book reflects the dark side of American history, namely race and slavery. The novel begins with the gruesome murder of a runaway slave, Jesse — a murder resulting from Morgan’s negligence. Realizing his lapse in judgment, Morgan, rather than returning home to face his family, sets out in search of Pilgrim. Much of the tale is Morgan’s maturation into manhood over a period of several months as he eludes Jesse’s killers, who are stalking him. Jesse had entrusted to Morgan a mysterious secret stone rune that holds the key to the freedom of other escaped slaves. Skillfully Mosher leaves clues along the trail of the narrative as symbols embedded in the text. As Morgan makes his way south, he not only eludes and defeats the sociopaths and psychotics on his trail but also finds love and companionship in the arms of a runaway slave girl, Slidell, who is the key to the rune he carries. Mosher’s narrative is brisk but haunting as Morgan not only encounters the demons stalking him but also the demons of his own heart. What is really at work here is a story about America’s demons and how we have managed to sidestep them along the way, holding them at times at arm’s length rather than embracing them and letting our encounter with them be the balm to promote healing. Nowhere is this more evident than when Morgan visits a ramshackle Monticello and later meets Slidell’s son at a plantation in western Tennessee named Grace. What gives Walking to Gatlinburg its verve and gravitas is the story along the way, much more so than the end of the journey. We focus on how an adolescent must contend with himself and others as he makes his journey. It’s a tale about a boy growing up that reminds us as a nation we still, many years beyond 1864, have to contend with our national demons and use them as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. Reviewer: James A. Percoco James A. Percoco is the author of Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments and is History Educator-in-Residence at American University.
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Map. 352 pp., 2010, Shaye Areheart Books,