One day, while living with her husband in London, Elisabeth Payne Rosen spilled her groceries in front of the Duke of York’s Barracks on King’s Road and in a flash of inspiration, decided that she wanted to know everything about the American Civil War. Rosen’s ensuing research is presented in her first novel “Hallam’s Warâ€â€”the tale of a Southern family that is divided by conflicting loyalties during this turbulent time in American history. Although an obvious depth of research fuels this portrait, it ultimately overpowers the narrative structure of the story.
Hugh Hallam, a veteran of the Mexican War and now a cotton farmer, has settled down with his wife Serena, their three children and their slaves at Palmyra in western Tennessee. Hallam is more moderate than most Southern plantation owners—he recognizes the necessity of slaves in successfully running his farm and understands that the status quo in the South would never allow for the freedom of his slaves. Therefore, he tries to give them the best life possible under these circumstances—from quality cabins in which to eat and sleep to allowing his slaves small freedoms like occasional payment for a job well done or permitting his favorite slave, French, to read magazines.
The first part of this epic novel follows daily life at Palmyra when John Varick, a reporter from the North comes seeking Hallam as part of a piece he’s writing on the state of the South. Hallam is stoic and, though he doesn’t completely agree with slavery, he refuses to give Varick fodder for an anti-South tirade. When Varick sees evidence that Hallam’s neighbor, Ross McQuirter, is having inappropriate relations with his young female slaves, he almost immediately departs Palmyra with enough material for his story. Though there are moments of excitement, the first half is paced much like Southern life as Rosen describes, from Varick’s perspective, “There was never that sense of ‘oughtness’ that deviled the Easterner—the feeling that there was always more to do and that time could not be savored for itself alone.â€
Unfortunately, Rosen takes this sentiment to heart and leads the reader through the diverse perspectives of her many characters, presenting an ever-expanding portrait of the South leading up to the Civil War, but one in which nothing much happens. From manners and clothing to farming and geography, descriptions and summaries are the main pistons of the novel and, while they work at times, their continual application begins to drag the story down (“The wide breezeway through the center of the house, designed for ventilation in the sweltering heat, ran to an identical porch across the front, the double doors at either end designed to close in winter, converting it to a central hallâ€).
When the Civil War breaks out, the Hallam family is thrown into disarray. Hugh becomes a Colonel in the Western division of the Confederate army, leaving Serena in charge of the farm along with the couple’s oldest son Lewis. But when Hallam disappears in the Battle of Shiloh and French escapes from the farm with most of Hallam’s other slaves, the simple, quiet life the Hallam family once enjoyed is replaced with uncertainty.
Rather than spending the time to put Lewis in any of these described situations, Rosen employs only a few vague sentences, which leave only a vague sense of the character. Lewis does grow more concrete as the novel progresses, but he never completely reaches authenticity.
The pacing of the novel makes some sense in the first portion of the book, successfully capturing the slow, deliberate pace of Southern life, but as the novel progresses, this lethargic measure continues at the expense of the narrative story. Despite the fact that the South is scrambling to combat the North, the pacing of the story remains the same. Rosen has the ability to write affecting scenes—the play-by-play of the Battle of Shiloh and Lewis’ search for his father among brutally wounded soldiers are two examples—but she too often resorts to her ever-expanding historical universe rather than action or conflict, and the long stretches of inaction make the narrative sequence almost an afterthought. The novel has its share of exciting events, but they tend to remain buried under Rosen’s lengthy description.
This debut novel shows brief glimpses of Rosen’s potential to establish herself as a master of historical fiction, but to achieve that status her work needs more scene and less summary. She would benefit from characters more rounded and complex. Although “Hallam’s War†can’t quite support its own weight, it is nevertheless a thoroughly researched testament to the startling transformation of Southern life during the Civil War.
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