Illustrated, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 400 pp., 2009, Pelican Publishing Co., www.pelicanpub.com, $25.95.

Take an older, pro-Union slave-owning farmer in western Tennessee who performed a mission for Ulysses Grant at the Battle of Fort Donelson; add Federal occupation and an escalating cycle of guerilla attacks and Union responses; mix with the ensuing execution and beheading of two of the farmer’s sons by the occupiers; and toss in a grief-blinded father, a customized sniper rifle, and a campaign of vengeance by one man who was never captured or tried.

If there is enough primary source material, this is the recipe for a highly interesting biography or historical account.

Therein lays the problem in retired Marine officer Tom McKenney’s book about the exploits of Jack Hinson. The sources are scarce. To his credit, McKenney alerts the reader to this dearth of evidentiary support.

Unfortunately, the available material leaves only a skeletal outline that McKenney is forced to flesh out by inventing conversations, mental impressions and the details of most incidents.

The supportable basic facts are that after his sons George and John were executed as suspected guerillas in late 1862, Hinson designed a specialized rifle and embarked on a lengthy solo-sniper campaign, first against patrols and then against military traffic on the Tennessee River.

He produced a total of 36 “kills.” Eventually he also became a scout for Nathan Bedford Forrest and played a significant role in Forrest’s November 1864 raid on William T. Sherman’s supply base at Johnsonville, Tenn.

Much of McKenney’s speculation is plausible, if not compellingly so. Some, however, is not. For example, family tradition holds that in 1862 Hinson freed his 50-plus slaves. McKenney goes beyond this bare fact and speculates that Hinson paid $1,000 apiece to all of them to start their lives of freedom.

Assuming that McKenney is referring to Federal currency and not to the ersatz Confederate dollar, this would amount to cash payments of approximately $1.3 million in present value. It seems highly unlikely that even a substantial farmer such as Hinson would have had readily available cash in anything remotely approaching that amount.

The proposition that Hinson repeatedly targeted Union vessels from the same river bluff location without being captured also strains credulity. Moreover, much of the prose tends to be overwrought — complete with exclamation points. A judicious editor could have helped.

When the book ventures into areas which can be documented, there are a number of errors. References to the 7-knot river ironclad USS Carondelet as a “fast” or “high-speed” gunboat would undoubtedly be a shocking, if pleasant, surprise for its inventor James Eads.

A description of Sherman’s 1864 march as one marked by Sherman’s calculated “toleration of murder and widespread rape” finds its origins in Southern myth rather than in reliable scholarship.

The assertion that the inadvertent spiking of a Columbiad cannon inside Fort Henry was a “pivotal moment” for the war’s outcome is unvarnished hyperbole. The book’s dismissal of slavery as a significant factor in secession is redolent of Margaret Mitchell’s Tara.

This book does convey a graphic impression of the conditions in a region that was under Union occupation for most of the war. Hinson’s story is inherently interesting, and credit is due for the extensive research efforts that were made, including interviews of descendants, extended visits to the locales, and the use of Hinson’s 1863 affidavit.

The book, however, should not be billed as a “biography.” Readers who expect a documented treatment of Jack Hinson’s life and feats will be disappointed. Those who are comfortable with something that better fits the genre of “historical fiction” may find value here.

Reviewer: John Foskett

John Foskett is a practicing attorney in Boston, Mass.,  and has a life-long interest in the Civil War.