HF Most Influential Civil War Fiction

Historical-Fiction
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
There was a recent thread on listing titles that each poster found personally shaped their understanding of the Civil War. I thought I'd list a few of the fictional treatments of the War I've loved and encourage other posters to do the same. Maybe someone will find something worth reading in our plague year.

Killer Angels Of course.

To Play for a Kingdom. A novel where a platoon of the 14th Brooklyn fights and between battles, plays a series of baseball games with a Confederate unit during the Overland Campaign

Miss Ravenel's Conversion Written a couple of years after the war by former Union officer, its a fascinating account of battle, freedpeople, Confederates, Unionists, heroes, heroines, anti-heros, femme fatales, double dealing and generally a good read. Needs its own mini-series.

Little Women The war is very much way in the background, like a novel set on the homefront in WWII. Still good. Read March and found it too modern in tone.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Tangled Victorian prose and plots to be sure. But very good in places. George, Eliza and her baby must flee the United States to Canada, like East Germans coming over the Berlin Wall in the Cold War, slave catchers at their heels. Tom's battle of will and faith with the evil Simon Legree, a black Christ dying for America's sins

John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its an epic poem, very much of its mid 20th century time. I read it in the 1970s first and loved it. I reread part of it when I found it in a library booksale.

Red Badge of Courage This needs a new movie treatment.

Here is where I make the confession that will sink me in the estimation of my fellow posters: I haven't read Gone With the Wind. Yet.
 
There was a recent thread on listing titles that each poster found personally shaped their understanding of the Civil War. I thought I'd list a few of the fictional treatments of the War I've loved and encourage other posters to do the same. Maybe someone will find something worth reading in our plague year.

Killer Angels Of course.

To Play for a Kingdom. A novel where a platoon of the 14th Brooklyn fights and between battles, plays a series of baseball games with a Confederate unit during the Overland Campaign

Miss Ravenel's Conversion Written a couple of years after the war by former Union officer, its a fascinating account of battle, freedpeople, Confederates, Unionists, heroes, heroines, anti-heros, femme fatales, double dealing and generally a good read. Needs its own mini-series.

Little Women The war is very much way in the background, like a novel set on the homefront in WWII. Still good. Read March and found it too modern in tone.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Tangled Victorian prose and plots to be sure. But very good in places. George, Eliza and her baby must flee the United States to Canada, like East Germans coming over the Berlin Wall in the Cold War, slave catchers at their heels. Tom's battle of will and faith with the evil Simon Legree, a black Christ dying for America's sins

John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its an epic poem, very much of its mid 20th century time. I read it in the 1970s first and loved it. I reread part of it when I found it in a library booksale.

Red Badge of Courage This needs a new movie treatment.

Here is where I make the confession that will sink me in the estimation of my fellow posters: I haven't read Gone With the Wind. Yet.
In the Killer Angels line (fictionalized history), I'd submit that any of Ralph Peters' series (Cain at Gettysburg, etc.) is actually better than Shaara's book. In the line of true historical fiction, his series under the name "Owen Parry" also is excellent.
 
I have read The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, I forget to mention it. Worth reading, although the TV version wasn't too good. I haven't read The March by Doctorow. I started the one about the woman who lived on the Franklin Battlefield, half read, than lost or misplaced or got interrupted and never finished it.

Elkhorn Tavern by Douglas C. Jones is quite good. He's written some good western set novels as well.
 
Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

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Gingrich and Forstchen’s alternate history of Gettysburg was an epiphany for me. As I read the last page it hit me like a ton of bricks. Even if Lee had utterly destroyed the Army of the Potomac, the Confederacy would not and could not win the war militarily against the vastly superior resources of men and material of the North.

I have to admit, however, that I had to try to find the Pipe Creek line after reading this book.
 
1. Lincoln by Gore Vidal: The novel is a better version of Team of Rivals.
2. Confederates by Thomas Keneally: Solves a famous mystery with characters real enough to cast a shadow on the pages.
3. Freedom by Willam Safire: Includes a 350-page "underbook" reconciling speculation with agreed-upon facts.
4. Woe to Live On by David Woodrell: After the movie it became better known as Ride With the Devil.
5. The Killer Angles by Michael Shaara: Despite slavery, even neutral readers might root for the Confederates.
6. Ironclads: Man-of-War by Larry Names: Well researched plot suggests how the war may have been aborted.
7. Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith: Invites investigation of illegal between-the-lines commerce and era-specific shoulder arms technologies.
8. Gray Victory by Robert Skimin: Brilliant double entendre.
9. Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee: T. Fleming: Uses courtroom drama to discover true Radical Republican motives durning treason trial.*
10. A Bullet for Stonewall by Benjamin King: Why Stonewall's amputation recovery soured.
11. The Starbuck Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell: They end after Sharpsburg when the war was no longer a fair contest.
12. Randall Greenwood's Jo Shelby Trilogy: For readers who can't get enough Jo Shelby. (Hard to find).

* Thomas Fleming uses the courtroom characters to discover the motives for the Civil War by having the two sides argue it out. The full answer comes a few years later when he publishes his non-fiction, A Disease of the Public Mind.
 
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Ambrose Bierce! I think his short stories about the war are some of the most haunting I've ever read, especially the one about Chickamauga.

I also really enjoy Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, though I never could get into Jeff's books.

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

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I love this book, and I love Paulette Jiles's writing! She has a new book out I just got. :smile:
 
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