Overview
After nearly a month of waiting for the arrival of pontoon bridges, General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac has crossed the icy Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg, the boyhood home of George Washington. Poised atop the rolling hills above the town, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia waits to stop them. On 13 December 1862 at nine in the morning under a shroud of fog and bombardment smoke, the battle begins. By noon, the Federal 2d Corps is ordered into the growing slaughter. Marching with it from the heart of Fredericksburg is the Irish Brigade, famous for its raucous conviviality in camp. These immigrants from the tenements of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston maintain their formation under a murderous artillery barrage. Hundreds are maimed and killed as they advance up the long, open plain, but their green flag keeps bobbing forward. At the edge of that plain is a stone wall, and massed behind it are many Irish soldiers in gray, fiercely holding on to this redoubt. When they see their brother Irishmen advancing upon them, a cheer of joy comes forth, only to be shut off by their Irish-born colonel's cry: "Give it to them, boys!" Fredericksburg is a riveting account of one of the bloodiest days in the War Between the States. A gritty, historically accurate novel of the brutal fight for a lone stone wall, it chronicles six Irish-Americans - their sufferings and aspirations in both the old world and the new - as they pass through the shock of combat and the fog of war. But beyond that, it is a microcosm of the Civil War, bringing to awful light the reality of war between brothers. It is a novel that underscores the horror of that terrible day along the Rappahannock.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
The Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., in 1862 was the Union's most costly and humiliating defeat of the Civil War. In this powerful account of the conflict, Mitchell (Shadow on the Valley) chronicles the fates of the Irish soldiers who fought for both sides. Approaching his subject as Michael Shaara did in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, Mitchell starkly showcases real-life generals, captains, sergeants and privates as they fight and struggle to survive. On the frozen slopes of Marye's Heights, Union General Thomas Meagher commands the tough Irish Brigade. Ailing from wounds and troubled by Union delays and blunders, he gallantly leads his Yankee Irishmen as they vainly charge across open ground to reach Rebel entrenchments. Hidden within a sunken road and behind a stone wall, meanwhile, the Confederate Irishmen of Colonel Robert McMillan's 24th Georgia Volunteers nervously wait for the massive Yankee assault. Sgt. Michael Sullivan, McMillan's orderly, is steadfast and true, while across the line, William Tyrrell, a Yankee color sergeant, struggles with fear and self-doubt, hoping for a wound that will prevent him from running away. Through this compelling tale of valor, hardship and sacrifice, Mitchell demonstrates that the Civil War Irish fought like demons, but that their courage was no match for the flaming walls of cannon and musket fire that consumed them utterly. (Mar.)Library Journal
On December 13, 1862, the Confederate and Union armies clashed in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in a savage battle. Mitchell shows the progression of "Bloody Sunday" through the eyes of six Irish soldiers, three on each side. Mitchell switches viewpoints frequently. Subheads offer time and place of segments, which shorten as the pace of battle heats up and grow longer as it wanes. The result is choppy and confusing, leaving the reader to wonder where he is and to root for both sides at once. Still, readers of war stories may enjoy the battle scenes, which are realistic and full of blood and body parts. Mitchell's previous book, Shadow on the Valley (LJ 1/94), also a Civil War novel, was praised for its excellent historical detail, which Fredricksburg also exhibits. Buy for Civil War buffs.-Andrea Lee Shuey, Dallas P.L.Kirkus Reviews
An impressive addition to the list of recent, grimly realistic (and well-researched) novels about the Civil War. Mitchell (Shadow on the Valley, 1994, etc.) gives one of the most venerable clichés of the conflict (brother vs. brother) new life by focusing on one the war's less well-known ironies.On December 13, 1862, at the battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate and Union regiments composed largely of Irish emigrants came face to face for the first time. The resulting slaughter demonstrated to both sides how little the old identities they had clung to in America now meant. They shared, after all, bitter memories of the Great Famine of the 1840s in Ireland, and of their long struggle to make a place for themselves in a new country. They also shared a belief that one day they would somehow unite to oust the British from Ireland. Yet suddenly none of that mattered. At Fredericksburg, the blithely incompetent commander of the Union Army, Ambrose Burnside, sent his troops against an almost impregnable Confederate line. In a pivotal moment in the novel, Irish troops serving with the Confederates cheer when they see the Union's Irish regiments, identified by the banners, advancing. They are moved to joy by the sight of so many Irishmen in arms, stepping forward with such cool discipline. And then they open fire. In a series of six doomed charges, the Irish regiments were destroyed by their kinsmen. Mitchell, in a work reminiscent of such Civil War novels as The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, and The Crater, by Richard Slotkin, traces the moment-by-moment flow of the battle; deftly weaves together historical and fictional characters; and renders with conviction the horrific experience of battle. In catching the moment when men discovered how the war had swept away their old lives, Mitchell offers an apt metaphor for the way in which that conflict dissolved and reshaped America's identity.
A highly original work of historical fiction.