Gods and Generals: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Shaara, Michael Shaara

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
July 1997

In 1966, Michael Shaara took his family on an outing to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to visit the historic battlefields of the Civil War. It was there that he first felt the inspiration to compose what has become one of the greatest pieces of historical fiction ever written about that great and tragic battle: The Killer Angels, published in 1975. Michael Shaara won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, and his book was the basis for the epic 1993 Ted Turner film, "Gettysburg," which he unfortunately did not live to see. But there was something missing, something left unwritten. Now Jeff Shaara, Michael's son, has penned his first novel, a prequel to The Killer Angels, adding more depth to the characters his father chronicled. Jeff had a strong vision of how to make the story in his own novel blend with his father's masterpiece and an innate sense of how to make one story flow into the other. The result is Gods and Generals, proof that Jeff Shaara has inherited his father's ability to compose epic historical fiction.

"My father taught creative writing at Florida State University," explains Jeff, "and he would be the first to tell you that you cannot teach creative writing. Inspiration comes from a very strange place, something I never understood or experienced before trying to write Gods and Generals. I still can't explain where it comes from, how the words seem to just flow. I do recall one lesson of his, however: 'Show it, don't tell it.'" Indeed, the characters speak for themselves in Shaara's new novel, as the heroes ofthebattlefield from The Killer Angels — Winfield Scott Hancock, Robert E. Lee, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain — travel on the long road from Harper's Ferry to Gettysburg, where they fight to the bloody end. Gods and Generals is the story of the opening years of the war, of armies repeatedly locked in fierce struggles and stalemates, of enemies who had only a few years earlier been compatriots. The great commanders of the armies were never friends, but united forever nonetheless, as their individual stories, in the author's own words, "shape the most tragic event in our nation's history."

Hancock, Lee, Chamberlain — and a new character, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson — all meet for the first time at the battle of Fredericksburg, where Lee's Confederate Army gains a much-needed victory. But it is in the next great battle, at Chancellorsville, that Jackson is mortally wounded and the Union gains a vital edge. The only remaining hope for the rebel army, severely outmanned, is to make a final rush on Washington. And so the march begins, across the Potomac toward the tiny town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Jeff Shaara gives the reader the background history to The Killer Angels, from the opening skirmishes at Manassas to the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg. He brings to life the scenes and characters, the colors and terrors, of the terrible yet fascinating event that was the Civil War in America. To tour the monuments erected to battle in that historic Pennsylvania town, or any town visited by the Civil War, is to feel the spirits of history, courage, and tragedy that dwell there. Michael Shaara felt it, and his passion has been successfully passed along to his son. Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals belongs on the bookshelves of historical-fiction readers everywhere.

From the Publisher

The heartbreaking saga of the years preceding The Killer Angels

"SHAARA'S BEAUTIFULLY SENSITIVE NOVEL DELVES DEEPLY in the empathetic realm of psycho-history, where enemies do not exist--just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield. . . . [He] succeeds with his historical novel through fully realized characters who were forced to decide their loyalties amid the horrors of their dividing nation."
--San Francisco Chronicle

Publishers Weekly

Shaara, whose father, Michael Shaara, won the Pulitzer in 1975 for his Civil War saga The Killer Angels, penned this prequel, which spent 14 weeks on PW's bestseller list. (May)

Library Journal

Shaara, whose father, Michael, wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War novel The Killer Angels, proves he's a chip off the old block with this fictionalized account of life on the eve of the battle of Gettysburg.

School Library Journal

YAShaara has chosen four major figures of the Civil WarGenerals Lee, Jackson, Hancock, and Chamberlainand woven an excellent novel told from their individual viewpoints. The author excels at showing the personalities and lives of these key men. The central person in each alternating chapter moves the story toward the bloody battles of the Wilderness and Chancellorsville, and finally to the eve of the Gettysburg campaign. The compassion and religious convictions of Lee and Jackson are contrasted with the equally strong beliefs of Hancock and Chamberlain against secession and the destruction of the Union. All are frustrated by the political and administrative blunders that affect both armies. The author skillfully involves readers with each of the participants. Those unfamiliar with the period will appreciate the introduction and afterword that place the events within the context of the men's lives. Factual detail and deft character development create fascinating historical fiction.Barry Williams, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

BookList

This Shaara is the son of Michael Shaara, author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning, best-selling novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, "The Killer Angels" (1974). Accompanied by vast publisher promotion, "Gods and Generals" is Shaara "fils"' homage to Shaara "pere"'s interest in the Civil War and to the vein of superior historical fiction he mined so notably. This robust, thoughtful novel focuses simultaneously on the lives of four men who played significant roles in the military side of the Civil War in battles leading up to the great one at Gettysburg. A prequel, then, to "Killer Angels", the novel follows Stonewall Jackson, Winfield Scott Hancock, Joshua Chamberlain, and Robert E. Lee from 1858 to 1863, giving the reader splendidly detailed witness to how the war drew them into commanding positions. As should be the case with good historical fiction, Shaara, in taking actual figures from the past, rekindles them; he uses the personal experiences of these four men to meaningfully explore the political and military issues of the day. An impressive achievement, sure to be a highly requested public library title.

Dallas Morning News

"Compelling... A work of vivid drama and kill. The strength of this work is its personalization of the struggle. The action both draws in the reader and illustrates the gravity of each situation... There is also a certain poetry to Mr. Shaara's introspections and narrative."

Philadelphia Inquirer

"Gods and Generals is an honorable, readable sprawl of a book... Shaara's best service in Gods and Generals is to take men who now stand as unnoticed monuments outside courthouses and humanize them."

Chicago Sun-Times

"Powerful...A worthy companion to The Killer Angels...Shaara brilliantly charts the war, the exploits of the combatants and their motivations. He also concisely shows how the early parts of the campaign unfolded. His accounts of the battles of Williamsburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville are exciting... Though the story of the Civil War has been told many times, this is the rare version that conveys what is must have felt like."

Detroit Free Press

"Jeff Shaara has succeeded brilliantly. Gods and Generals is every once as fine a work as his father's was."

San Francisco Chronicle

"Shaara's beautifully sensitive novel delves deeply in the empathetic realm of psycho-histoyr, where enemies od not exist -- just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield...[He] succeeds with his historical novel through fully realized characters who were forced to decide their loyalties amid the horrors fo their dividing nation."

& Constitution Atlanta Journal

"Brilliant does not even begin to describe the Shaara gift. Thank Gods and Generals that it was passed from father to son."

Kirkus Reviews

First-time author Sharra comes of a distinguished lineage: His father, Michael (who died in 1988), wrote the Pulitzer Prizewinning novel The Killer Angels (1974) about the Civil War battle of Gettysburg.

It's some testament to the younger Sharra's skills that his own debut, meant to be a prequel to that earlier book, can often hold its own with that work. Like Killer Angels, this new novel focuses mostly on actual figures swept up in that immense conflict: Robert E. Lee and Thomas ("Stonewall") Jackson on the Confederate side, Joshua Chamberlain and Winfield Scott Hancock on the Union, most prominently. Sharra follows these figures, and a score more, from the onset of the war up to the days just before the 1863 battle at Gettysburg. (A sequel will follow the surviving characters through to the war's conclusion.) And like Killer Angels, this novel displays an impressive grasp of the particulars of the conflict. The author projects some believable, idiosyncratic life into such familiar figures as Lee and Jackson. Lee's early disbelief in the possibility of war, and his growing, almost mystical conviction in the war's necessity and outcome, are all nicely conveyed, as is Joshua Chamberlain's harsh coming-of-age in battle. Sharra is particularly good at rendering the reluctance of many of the combatants. But while this prequel offers a robust portrait of the early years of the war, it lacks something of the impact of Killer Angels. That novel's great resonance had something to do with the intense focus on just three days of battle: Gettysburg became a particularly apt metaphor for the entire conflict. This new book, by having to plod dutifully across several years of battles, seems at times more like an impressionistic work of history than a work of fiction.

Still, Sharra's wonderful command of detail and his generally shrewd depiction of character make for an impressive debut.

What People Are Saying

James McPherson
"The battle of Gettysburg featured a cast of characters dramatically and poignantly portrayed in Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. This new novel by his son Jeff Shaara describes the interconneted paths that brought these men together at this crossroads of our history. Readers of The Killer Angels won't want to miss Gods and Generals. -- Author of Battle Cry of Freedom

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Interviews & Essays
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Interviews & Essays

On Monday, July 14, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Jeff Shaara, author of GODS AND GENERALS.

Jeff Shaara: Good evening -- thank you! Pleasure to be here.

Jeff Shaara: I did not set out to mimic my father's style, but I have been told there are similarities. I just tried to tell the story in my own way, and it came out very close to my father's way. I don't have a better answer than that.

Jeff Shaara: The history is as factual as I could make it. That was critically important. By definition, what makes it fiction is the dialogue and the thoughts of the characters. But I knew historians would jump on this if the history wasn't correct, so I really tried to make the history as accurate as I could. That's what is interesting about these characters -- you don't have to embellish what they did. It's a wonderful story just telling the truth.

Jeff Shaara: Comparisons to THE KILLER ANGELS are inevitable. I knew that going into this, and had to accept it from the start. What I did not expect were the positive comparisons, which are wonderful. If people feel that GODS AND GENERALS can simply sit on the same shelf as my father's book, that's wonderful. I don't mind the comparisons a bit. Maybe after I've done this for a while, I hope that people will hear my voice, instead of just me and my father. But I'm too new at this to expect that.

Jeff Shaara: Discovering the character of Jackson. We learn about characters like this in history textbooks, usually in one-dimensional ways. It was an adventure for me to feel like I knew this man. The problem with that is that learning to love a character like this meant that it was a very, very difficult thing to have to write his death.

Jeff Shaara: I have had people question my right to put words in the mouths of these characters. There is no other way to tell a story like mine or my father's without doing that. My research gave me a very personal insight into who these people were, how they thought, and how they spoke, and I felt comfortable with the dialogue that I gave them. If I am not comfortable with what they are saying, then the reader will not be comfortable either, and the whole story falls apart. If I don't believe it, neither will you.

Jeff Shaara: I don't feel that I obscured the truth at all. If someone else feels that way, or senses something fake in my story, then I have failed as a writer. If there is a danger in historical fiction, it is when the facts are twisted, or history is falsified.

Jeff Shaara: Yes! I am almost finished with the manuscript now, and the publisher is already calling for publication next May. It begins exactly where THE KILLER ANGELS ends, moves through the end of the war, and brings in the wonderful character of Grant.

Jeff Shaara: Yes. But there was no pressure, because all I set out to do was continue my father's story, not compete with it. I never had any idea that GODS AND GENERALS would be receiving this kind of attention, something my father never saw in his lifetime.

Thanks a bunch!

Jeff Shaara: Certainly the research has to be done before anything is put onto paper. I am extremely lucky in that I have never experienced writer's block. I spend anywhere between two hours and 12 hours a day writing, depending just on how much comes out. I write until it stops, as if somebody turns off the switch.

Jeff Shaara: It did not happen long ago, because I don't feel that he was ever really understood. My memories of the end of his life were that he considered himself a failure. That's a real tragedy, considering the monument he left behind. I know full well that GODS AND GENERALS and the sequel would be his books if he was alive. There is closure in that.

Jeff Shaara: No, I read no other historical fiction on purpose. I didn't want anyone else's style to interfere in what I was trying to do. Of course, the only exception to that is THE KILLER ANGELS. I still have a hard time reading other writers' historical fiction.

Jeff Shaara: Yes, I was just there last week. I will probably be there every July for the rest of my life. [laughs]

Jeff Shaara: Turner is not involved at this point. Ron Maxwell, director of "Gettysburg," and I, are developing it to begin production, we hope, late next year. I have to be a little vague, at this point, but we hope to be able to make a serious announcement at the 135th of Antietam in September.

Jeff Shaara: Absolutely! The story doesn't exist without him. The principle characters are JLC, Lee, and Grant. The story will likely end with a brief chapter on JLC at the end of his life in 1914.

Jeff Shaara: That's not my style to rewrite history, although it can be very entertaining. Clearly Jackson's presence at Gettysburg would have certainly affected the outcome of the battle. I love getting into this stuff with historians, because everybody has a different theory on how things might have ended.

Jeff Shaara: If it does lead people in the wrong direction, it's because I've done a bad job in telling the story. I have no interest in creating myths. I know my father understood this well, particularly about JLC. If people discover a wonderful character like this because someone like my father, or maybe me, tries to tell his story, then I'm pretty happy with that.

Jeff Shaara: I have done it three times before, in both Civil War rooms and other author rooms. I'm very happy with the quality of the questions. It makes me think pretty hard on what it is that I do.

Jeff Shaara: Reynolds probably could have, and maybe should have, commanded the Army of the Potomac. Everyone who knew him wrote that he was unequalled as a commander of troops in the field, except possibly by Hancock. It certainly is likely that the war would have ended sooner than it did, and Grant might never have come to command.

Jeff Shaara: Gettysburg is always singled out as the turning point of the war. It's as close as Lee came to actually winning, and certainly if the battle had gone the other way, the war may have ended right there. One of the objections of doing a film about GODS AND GENERALS was raised by one Hollywood studio, who said "Didn't all the good stuff happen at Gettysburg?" Obviously I enjoyed writing about a great deal more "good stuff" that led up to Gettysburg. And by the way, I feel like the real turning point of the war was the death of Jackson.

Jeff Shaara: Hi! I'll say hi to Lynn, and yes, the sequel to THE KILLER ANGELS will be out next May. After that, I'm already beginning to work on a Mexican War story...

Jeff Shaara: Probably Joe Hooker. Even someone like Burnside, who was essentially incompetent -- at least he had good motives. Hooker seemed to have so much of his own self-interest at heart that he was outright dangerous, not only to his cause but to his own men.

Jeff Shaara: What we certainly want to do is keep the same spirit that the reenactors brought to the spirit of "Gettysburg." There were many lessons learned in the production of "Gettysburg," and I promise, the beards will be better!

Jeff Shaara: Certainly to some extent. The problem, of course, is that Longstreet is wounded in May of 1864, and doesn't return until near the end. For that reason, he can't be a main character in the story, but Lee certainly feels his loss, and in fact I've already written most of that part in the new book. You will see Longstreet getting wounded -- from his own point of view.

Jeff Shaara: It is amazing. At first, I simply didn't believe it at all. I thought maybe that people were just being too generous. As I've read more and more of those kinds of comments, what I'm now feeling is that my father truly left me a gift. And that by continuing his story, and actually seeing myself as a writer, not only can I honor him, but my whole life is moving in a different direction.

Jeff Shaara: It was very important that the reader be able to finish GODS AND GENERALS and pick up THE KILLER ANGELS and not miss a beat. So it was always clear where the ending would be. Just like it is very clear in the sequel where the beginning will be.

Jeff Shaara: I have been hearing a lot of good things about this new book called COLD MOUNTAIN. I haven't read it, and probably won't until I finish the sequel. I would also recommend a book called SHARPSHOOTER by David Madden.

Jeff Shaara: The best commanders were not always willing to take the job. Reynolds is the best example of that. Also, politics played a role. Lincoln had to deal with pressure from Halleck and Stanton, who had their own choices and their own motives. I believe that Grant finally was put in command because Lincoln had run out of patience.

Jeff Shaara: I have no complaints. This is a very different experience for me than it was for my father. It is quite likely that he would be a much more famous man if his relationship with New York had been better.

Jeff Shaara: That might be really the only point of disagreement between me and my father. However, consider that after Gettysburg, Lee did begin to use Longstreet's defensive tactics much more. Consider that through the wilderness, until the end of the war, Lee basically survived Grant's onslaught by using superior defensive strategy. If the Confederate soldiers didn't agree with Longstreet's idea of trench warfare, if it wasn't considered "manly" to dig a trench and hide from your enemy, by 1864 every man was looking for a shovel.

Jeff Shaara: I hope to get to Maine this fall. I really want to see what they've done with his house. Jeff Daniels is absolutely my first choice for JLC.

Jeff Shaara: My best source of information on Hancock were two books his wife's and General Walker's (on Hancock's staff). Also, the great surprise to me was realizing that Hancock was very much like my father. That made his character a great deal of fun to write. Thanks, Richard!

Jeff Shaara: Thanks to everyone for the extraordinary attention. This past year has been the ride of a lifetime. Thank you all!

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