TBR list – what have I read?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about building a TBR list. That post generated quite a bit of interest so I thought I would report back on one of the books. Let me know if you’d like to hear about others!

The first novel was Chris Bohjalian’s The Jackal’s Mistress. Here’s the blurb:

Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.

And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy – but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband? 

In that post I also provided a few criteria for what makes an intriguing read – my opinion, of course. Everyone has different preferences.

I selected The Jackal’s Mistress because the premise sounded intriguing, the time period represents a change for me, and because I’ve read others by Bohjalian – The Sandcastle Girls, The Light in the Ruins, The Double Bind – and thoroughly enjoyed them.

So how did The Jackal’s Mistress stack up to those criteria?

An opening chapter that brings me into the novel and offers the promise of a great story. A definite yes! Here’s the first sentence just to pique your interest: “She took the carving knife from the pumpkin pine table and pointed it at the stranger, the handle hard in her hand.”

A compelling protagonist I can relate to. Bohjalian provides two primary protagonists – Libby Steadman and Captain Jonathan Weybridge – and three other significant characters. Libby Steadman is gutsy and determined to do what’s right for Weybridge even though he is a ‘bluebelly’, a term for those fighting against the confederate army.

Jonathan Weybridge, formerly a professor at a college in Vermont, opens chapter two. He’s a Captain in the Union army camped in Virginia near the Blue Ridge Mountains with orders to head southwest “into the Shenandoah Valley with really one purpose: Burn the harvest.” Jonathan is committed to leading his men, brave in a quiet way, a man of honour. He’s writing to his wife: “His letters now had become a facade, because he saw no reason to share the brutality and the toll it [the war] was taking on him.” In less than an hour his lieutenant says: “This next hour? Goin’ to be fearful ugly. We is just waking’ snakes.”

Beyond Libby and Jonathan, the story features Joseph and Sally, a black couple who’d been freed by Libby’s father-in-law, and Jubilee, Libby’s twelve-year-old niece. Each voice, particularly that of Jubilee, adds to the story.

An interesting time period. Perhaps because I’m Canadian, I haven’t read many novels set during the American Civil War – does The Red Badge of Courage count? However, war stories are usually packed with tension and dramatic, life-altering circumstances and The Jackal’s Mistress is no exception. Even the title packs a punch.

Great pacing: Chris Bohjalian builds both tension and uncertainty with every chapter.

Engaging dialogue; Effective balance between narrative and dialogue. For me, dialogue propels the story forward. While I enjoy the narrative, I don’t have much patience for long paragraphs that are mainly full of description. Bohjalian’s characters have unique voices and perspectives. Although five POV characters is a lot to handle, in The Jackal’s Mistress each character brings a distinctive voice with distinctive concerns. Indeed, each character adds to the story in terms of nail-biting tension, depth, and perspective.

Meaningful themes: I always read with the challenges of today in mind. What can this novel and its characters tell me about me, my life, our particular time period. I feel that we are living with great uncertainty and change, with threats to our well being and to the world we know. In some ways, the time period of The Jackal’s Mistress feels like today with Americans as fiercely divided as they were during the Civil War. As I read, I wondered whether Chris Bohjalian was trying to remind us of our shared humanity through the story of a southern woman helping a Yankee soldier.

Other meaningful themes: the impact of war, the struggle for survival, the fierce desire to protect those you love, the sacrifices we make for family, what it takes to face war (and life) with courage, the scourge of racism, the cruelty of those in power. These blend very well to make a rich satisfying read.

Great writing: Bohjalian combines vivid descriptions, great pacing, complex characters and relationships, and unexpected twists into a page-turning novel. This is a novel I will study to understand what makes it work so well.

In one of the reader surveys I did, readers selected their favourite attributes of historical fiction. In my opinion The Jackal’s Mistress delivers on each of the top four: superb writing, a dramatic arc of historical events, characters both heroic and human and the feeling of being immersed in time and place.

By the way, I’m half way through The English Problem by Beena Kamlani – and it’s terrific too.

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.