Mini Reviews: Confederates in the Attic, A Thousand Lives, and Malaria Dreams

Confederates in the Attic
by Tony Horwitz
Vintage, 1998
Non-Fiction (History)

Summary in a Sentence:

Tony Horwitz, a former war correspondent, tells of his journeys to Civil War battlefields and the colorful people he meets along the way.

Read it if...

you've ever noticed that the 'War Between the States' continues to live in so many issues still with us, or if you're simply a fan of good narrative non-fiction. 5 stars.

A Thousand Lives

by Julia Scheeres
Free Press, 2011
Non-Fiction (Religion)

Summary in a Sentence:

Presents an account of how Jim Jones' followers who started out seeking a Utopian dream, soon found themselves trapped in a work camp run by a madman, and ended in the mass murder-suicide of 914 members in November 1978.

Read it if...

you remember what happened at Jonestown or have ever heard the phrase "don't drink the Kool-Aid" and were curious about its derivation. 3 stars.

Malaria Dreams
by Stuart Stevens
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989
Non-Fiction (Travel Writing)

Summary in a Sentence:

Recounts an adventure, by Stevens and a companion, across the wildest part of Africa that includes Cameroon, Lake Chad, Niger, Timbuktu, the Sahara, and ends at the shores of the Mediterranean.

Read it if...

you love armchair travel with hints of hilarity, or if you'd like to really know what Africa was like in the late 1980s. 5 stars.

The Confederate General Rides North by Amanda Gable

The Confederate General Rides North
by Amanda Gable
Scribner, August 2009
276 pages
Fiction
Personal Copy

Summary in a Sentence:

 Eleven-year-old Katherine McConnell, who is fascinated by stories of the Civil War generals, jumps at the chance to take a trip with her mother and drive north of their Georgia home in search of antiques, battlefields, and historic sites, but each stop causes Kat to question her understanding of war and her faith in her mother.

My Thoughts:

I had never heard of this book before attending the Southern Festival of Books in nearby Nashville last October. I love my yearly trek to Tennessee's capital to discover new authors each year, and Amanda Gable is quite a discovery, indeed. I found it very easy to relate with protagonist Katherine McConnell since I also grew up in the South as a fairly dorky, history buff kinda kid who had some conflicting emotions about the South's checkered past in the areas of slavery and civil rights. This book tackles these subjects and more with aplomb.

As Katherine and her mother travel further North and Katherine begins to sense that something is not quite right, Katherine uses her love of Civil War history to cope with her personal difficulties and misgivings. The author conveys this in italicized sections where Katherine pretends to be a general fighting her own war, which is what Katherine is essentially doing. Katherine is fighting a personal war over her ideas about what it means to be a Southerner, but she is also fighting a familial war with her mother who has been overtaken with her mental illness. Also going on in the novel, which is set in 1968, are the political and cultural events surrounding civil rights that seemed to reach a fever pitch that year.

One aspect of the novel I particularly loved was Katherine's love of books, especially the biographies of famous people in American history. There is one particular set that I read as a child; my favorite was the biography of Florence Nightingale.

For fans of Southern fiction, as well as those interested in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the effects of mental illness on families.

~ This book counts towards the Random Reading Challenge ~

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