Unto This Hour (1984)

Unto This Hour is a fictional account of the August, 1862, battle known as the Second Bull Run - or Second Manassas - that interweaves the lives of the famous and the ordinary in a drama of death, victory, survival, and finally defeat. Against the vivid backdrop of the actual battle are several subplots that explores the feelings, thoughts, and actions taken by people directly and indirectly affected by the war. Stories of ineptitude, a general's need to prove himself, a reluctant cavalry officer that finds love, a girl trying to escape the only life shes known, the life and death decisions and actions of front-line soldiers, a southern lady's struggle to keep control of large plantation full of slaves, one man's desire to capture the terrible destruction of war, and one newspaper man's reckless drive to get the story, even the exploration of forbidden love; the joy of victory, and the agony of defeat.

Did I mention there are a lot of subplots. At first with all the characters and story lines it's hard not to get lost in confusion, but each story line is compelling . The vivid accounts of battle and surgery drives this novel forward and foreshadows the death and destruction that would be brought on the characters in the novels final chapters.

I thought the novel was well researched and Wicker managed to mix fact with fiction effectively. The only real drawback for me was the way Wicker used truncated and misspelled dialogue to show the poor southerns and slaves appear ignorant and uneducated. Even their internal thoughts were written in this “southern' dialect. Since most of the characters are southerns it almost drives you to the point of distraction. Otherwise, Wicker's writing is clear and concise, making the individual stories follow smoothly into one narrative. ( )