Sharpshooter: A Novel of the Civil War »

A gripping and thought-provoking work that is unlike any Civil War novel previously written, Sharpshooter takes us into the mind of one of the war's veterans as he attempts, years after the conflict, to reconstruct his experiences and to find some measure of meaning in them. A child of the divided East Tennessee mountain region, Willis Carr left home at age thirteen to follow his father and brothers on a bridge-burning mission for the Union cause. Imprisoned at Knoxville, he agreed to join the Confederate army to avoid being hanged and became a sharpshooter serving under General Longstreet. He survived several major battles, including Gettysburg, and eventually found himself guarding prisoners at the infamous Andersonville stockade, where a former slave taught him to read. After the war, haunted by his memories, Carr writes down his story, revisits the battlefields, studies photographs and drawings, listens to other veterans as they tell their stories, and pores over memoirs and other books. Above all, he imbues whatever he hears, sees, and reads with his emotions, his imaginations, and his intellect. Yet, even as an old man nearing death, he still feels that he has somehow missed the war, that something essential about it has eluded him. Finally, in a searing moment of personal revelation, a particular memory, long suppressed, rises to the surface of Carr's consciousness and draws his long quest to a poignant close.

Publishers Weekly

This fictional Civil War memoir by Madden (The Suicide's Wife) shows how a plain tale, skillfully told, can carry more meaning than ornate plot contrivances and fancy ruminations. Willis Carr is 13 when he goes to war in 1861. He leaves his home in the mountains of eastern Tennessee to tag along with his pro-Union father and brothers on a bridge-burning raid into Confederate territory. Taken captive, Willis enlists in the Rebel army rather than be executed by a firing squad. Even as a young boy, Willis is a crack shot, and he soon becomes a deadly sharpshooter. Serving under General Longstreet, he targets Yankees for four years, surviving Gaines Mill, Gettysburg and the Wilderness. When young Willis finally deserts to go home to his beloved mountains, he is recaptured by Confederate forces and ends up as a guard at the infamous Andersonville prison. There, he is taught to read by a former slave. At war's end, Willis survives one more Civil War horror, the explosion and sinking of the steamboat Sultana. Willis begins this account as a young man of 28, trying to make sense of his experience, a task he completes only when he is old. Nearing death, he allows himself to have a memory that makes all the other facts and recollections fall into place. Madden suffuses the narrative, dialogue and characters with understated thought and emotion so that it resonates like a true story. (Nov.)