Year of Jubilo - Softcover

A reluctant soldier, Gawain Harper was goaded into joining the Confederate forces in 1862 by the rabid secessionist Judge Rhea, father of the woman Harper loves. After three years of fighting the Union, the former professor of literature is now trudging home defeated and confused, weighed down by the thought that he is "walking through someone else's memory." The South of his past has indeed vanished, and the town Harper returns to is now governed by the victorious (but wary) soldiers of the North and overflowing with vengeful planters, opportunistic spies, and the fear and ingrained attitudes of its vanquished citizens. These characters are larger than life, as only those who live in such a land and time--one of Queen Anne's lace and poisonous snakes, of Victorian manners and the human indignity of slavery--can be. There's "King" Solomon Gault, the ruthless captain of a band of insurrectionists, plotting an attack on the ruling army; Colonel Burduck, the battle-worn commander who captured slave ships off the African coast in his youth and must now maintain order in a region that once supported slavery; Molochi Fish, a grotesque semi-being who lurks on the edges of humanity, scarred by brutality and meting it out in return; and of course Harper, who, spurred on by the meddling but ebullient Harry Stribling, dives back into this mess to create a life and retrieve a love.

Time is as enveloping in The Year of Jubilo as the lingering smoke of war and the sudden downpours that drench Cumberland's burned landscape. Bahr weaves his characters in and out of one another's lives, creating an almost smothering net. Harper notes, "they were spared of death, so must once again pay the tally for living; free, so they were indentured to tomorrow." In a fascinating narrative of epic proportion and intricate detail, Bahr intertwines life, love, loyalty (or the lack thereof), freedom, slavery, and death. --S. Ketchum

Howard Bahr teaches English at Motlow State Community College in Tullahoma, Tennessee. His first novel, The Black Flower, was a New York Times Notable Book and received the Harold D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.