The New York Times has a review of a new novel that tells the story of a real unit in the United States Colored Troops. BLACK CLOUD RISING by David Wright Faladé is a “straight up page-turner} according to the review. Here are excerpts:
There’s nothing pulpy about David Wright Faladé’s “Black Cloud Rising.” It’s a Civil War novel based on the actual experiences of the African Brigade, a unit of Black soldiers, including many freed, recently enslaved people, that in 1863 poured into the coastal South with Union forces, helping to hunt down rebel guerrillas.
Faladé’s book is so accessible and rousing, though, that you hope it becomes available as a mass-market paperback, in packaging that more clearly announces: This book is a straight-up page-turner.
There are no braided points of view here, no too-pretty words, no splintered syntax. No leaden diagnoses of the human predicament belch on the smoky skyline. The nature of the American experiment is implicitly questioned but not burned to the ground.
What is burned to the ground, satisfyingly, are the houses of holdout slave owners, landed aristocrats. This is a classic war story told simply and well, its meanings not forced but allowed to bubble up on their own…
The African Brigade served under the leadership of Gen. Edward Augustus Wild, a white, one-armed, red-bearded abolitionist. In “Fire on the Beach,” Faladé describes Wild’s flowing hair and “piercing eyes — reminiscent of John Brown’s ascetic’s glare.”
Wild was a pitiless and provocative warrior: He liked to goad, to rouse tempers, to leave rubble in his wake, to impose Carthaginian terms. He emancipated enslaved people as he moved along. The Black men who served under him, in “Black Cloud Rising,” admire him deeply. They pay him their highest compliment: They use the N-word when referring to him.
Wild had no intention of sneaking into the South. He wanted to make a terrifying noise….
Follow the link to read the whole review.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
Where can one go to purchase the book,Black Cloud Rising.
I pre-purchased it on amazon. I am sure it will be in better bookstores as well.
I’m not surprised that there is a novel about the USCT; I am surprised that there haven’t been others. While Sherman, a pro-slavery Unionist, did his best to relegate them to rear echelon guard duty, and regarded them as inferior in all respects, under General Thomas at the Battle of Nashville, USCT units proved they could fight, and fight well, for Freedom.