The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War

Novel of the Civil War

by Howard Bahr

After returning from the Civil War, Cass Wakefield means to live out the rest of his days in his hometown in Mississippi. But when a childhood friend asks him to accompany her to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother from the battlefield where they died, Cass cannot refuse. As they make their way north in the company of two of Cass's brothers-in-arms, memories of the war emerge with overwhelming vividness. Before long the group has assembled on the haunted ground of Franklin, where past and present--the legacy of war and the narrow hope of redemption--will draw each of them to a painful reckoning.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Civil War, Fiction, American Civil War, War, Historical, American History

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 2006

About the author

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Howard Bahr (1946- ) is an American novelist, born in Meridian, Mississippi. Bahr, who served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War and then worked for several years on the railroads, enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the early 1970s when he was in his late 20s. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Ole Miss and served as the curator of the William Faulkner house, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi for nearly twenty years. He also taught American literature during much of this time at the University of Mississippi. In 1993, he became an instructor of English at Motlow State College in Tullahoma, Tennessee, where he worked until 2006. Bahr is the author of three critically acclaimed novels centering around the American Civil War. He currently resides in Jackson, Mississippi, and teaches courses in creative writing at Belhaven College.

Bahr began his writing career in the 1970s, writing both fiction and non-fiction articles that appeared in publications such as Southern Living, Civil War Times Illustrated, as well as the short-lived regional publication, Lagniappe (1974-75) which he and Franklin Walker co-edited. His first published book, a children's story entitled Home for Christmas, came out in 1987 and was re-published in 1997 in a different edition (with new illustrations) following the release of his first novel, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War. This latter book, set during the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee in 1864, was nominated for a number of national awards, including from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Gettysburg College, and the Book-of-the-Month Club, and was a New York Times Notable Book, but its release was somewhat overshadowed by the release at the same time of the bestseller, Cold Mountain.

In 2000, Bahr's second novel, The Year of Jubilo, was released. This novel, set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War in the fictional Mississippi town of Cumberland, deals with the dehumanizing effects of war and its aftermath on Southern society. The Year of Jubilo, like The Black Flower, was a New York Times Notable Book.

Bahr's third novel, The Judas Field, was released in 2006. In The Judas Field, Bahr again returns to the Battle of Franklin theme, but this time it is through the eyes of one of its participants, again from Cumberland, who travels back to the battlefield in the 1880s to recover the body of one of the fallen, and, in doing so, relives the horror of that fateful day in 1864.

Howard Bahr is a Freemason, having served as Master of the Lodge while he was in Oxford. He is also a member of the Episcopal Church.

Reviews

[Lori Keeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Bahr has got to be the most intuitive and visceral writer of the Civil War. His trilogy of books have been the most intimate and personal reading experiences I have ever had. The Black Flower took the reader through the psyche of the soldier’s experience of one of the most harrowing and bloody battles, The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Then The Year of Jubilo allowed readers to experience the account of a broken community trying to rebuild during the Reconstruction period. And finally he takes his readers back to the scene of the battle of Franklin 20 years later only to demonstrate how the ghosts and fears still linger. He has certainly set the bar extremely high for future writers of the Civil War. He has created a trilogy that evokes the sadness and gruesomeness of the war and the dreadful after effects for ALL of those who endured it. He does it with a grotesque beauty that brings about real emotions to the reader. The scars remain visible still and in this third installment Bahr doesn’t forget to remind us of the angst and apprehensions, the fears and the anguish that struck our countrymen during this time.

The fears experienced by the soldiers on both sides are still very vivid 20 years after the end of the war. Cass Wakefield and his friend, Alison Sansing begin a journey back to Franklin from Mississippi. Alison, who is dying, wants to bring the bodies of her father and brother back to bury them at home for them all to finally be together in death and only Cass can help her. The journey back to Tennessee is flooded with memories and ghosts of the past. The story moves flawlessly from present to past as Cass and his counterparts, Lucian and Roger, relive their fears and anxieties which plummet them into a deep depression. They come face to face with some of their worst living horrors. Death rides along with them in their minds as it hovered over them during the war and Bahr makes Death a fellow character.

Sometimes men died for no apparent reason: they simply quit; they sat down, arranged themselves, and ceased to be. The Death Angel was everywhere waiting, counting them over and over, eager to subtract.

The guilt these men experienced by living was something to drive a man mad and to ease their pain with the help of laudanum, Injun weed or alcohol. They would not and could not forget the faces or the voices of those that they left there on the battlefield. Grief crowded the secret room of their hearts.

So they grieved, and more: harried by guilt. That, too, was the work of the Death Angel, who chose one and let another live, who dropped this one by the roadside while his comrade walked on.

Once again, Bahr’s prose is beautiful but damaging because how else could one feel after questioning his existence and wondering where in the world could God be in all of this. Cass certainly experiences his own faith ebbs and flows through his fears and sorrows. Realizing that man’s will not God’s was to blame for the death and suffering.

God, if He loved as He was said to love, could not be blamed for this, could not have planned this back when the planets were still being flung across the sky. Something else— vanity, madness, illusion, he would never know— had risen from the will of Man and laid all this under the moon. God grieved among them, as bent and helpless and alone as any, while each prayer of the dying pierced Him like a nail. God suffered more than any, for He had seen this countless times before and knew He would see it again and again, and the hammer would ring again and again. God was greater than them all and must suffer more than any, and suffer for them all.

It is imperative for more people to read these books by Howard Bahr. His mark on the literature of the period will be forever ingrained in my head and heart. They are emotion-filled and representative of how humans act and react in times of war. These were neighbors and brothers, friends and family members who paid the highest price for those of us who are here living in the world today. We owe them a small amount of respect, in the very least, by remembering and not forgetting the sacrifices that got us here.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book in Howard Bahr's trilogy on the Civil War. If you read The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War, The Year of Jubilo: A Novel of the Civil War, and this one, you will learn everything you need to know about the men who fought this war, the women and families they left behind, and the world that was left when they came home. The writing is superb: battles are described with such delicacy that they become almost like a grotesque ballet. Death, which is inevitable, is an expected and sometimes welcome release from the horrors witnessed by tired, hungry, sick and injured men, who march long miles into the next battle because it's all they know to do anymore.
Most of the action in the first book takes place at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee. The second book finds the survivors at home in Cumberland, Mississippi, dealing with the aftermath and reconstruction. This third volume is set in 1885 twenty years later, when Cass Wakefield is asked by a neighbor to revisit Franklin to find the graves of her father and brother so she can bring them home.
Characters come and go in these books, as do the ghosts of the dead left on the field. Despite the best efforts of men who seek to destroy themselves and others by the act of war, the sun still rises and sets every day, rain still falls, flowers grow, seasons come and go, babies are born and people die, life goes on.

"In spite of all he had seen, Cass still believed in the fundamental decency of cats and men. He knew that God believed in it too, in spite of all He'd seen, in spite of all His grieving, and all the lies told about Him down the bloody ages. He was God after all, and had made all creatures, and had taken the noble chance of granting to one of them a will of his own, and in the end, the gift had been worth all the trouble."

I'd like to thank Mike Sullivan for leading me to this trilogy. They are the best Civil War novels I've ever read.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The year is 1884, the war is 20 years behind them and Alison Sansing is dying. Since the deaths of her father and her brother at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, she has been alone. Now she realizes that she will rest eternally alone, and she determines that her final act will be to recover their bodies and bring them home to the family cemetery where she can rest with them, as she feels she should. For this job, she needs the help of Cass Wakefield, the man who laid them to rest on the battlefield all those years ago.

This journey back to Franklin becomes not only a physical trip but also a mental one for Cass, Alison, and Cass’s confederates, Lucian and Roger. These men must step into a world they have struggled for years to leave behind. They must re-enter terrain where the worst nightmares were real, and they must walk ground that, for them, oozes the blood of their fellow soldiers. For Alison, it is an opportunity to know what befell the men she loved and the men who accompany her on her odyssey, and a chance to understand that she cannot ever truly understand at all.

The events that transpire during this trip are tragic and revealing. There is a sense that the life these individuals have in 1884 are merely shadows of the lives they left behind them in 1864. There is a great sadness, fraught with lost opportunity, that permeates this novel. I kept imagining what these lives might have been like had there been no war. I kept questioning the arbitrary nature of death and survival, the idea of fate and destiny and good and evil. And, of course, God.

Roger explains to Lucian where God is in all of this:

”He was there,” said Roger. “He was there all along, watching and grieving. If we live, I will take you over the next field myself, and maybe you will learn what you can only learn the hard way; that God is there with you, and whatever sorrow you are feeling--well, how infinite must the sorrow be in HIS heart? It is the only way. Once a man decides God planned all this, once he points to God as responsible, then his faith is gone. No mortal can bear that, no matter what he says. WE have lost pretty much everything, but faith we must not lose. That is why we pray, and fervently--but not for preservation, mind. That article is left to you and your pards, not to God. To ask Him for it, and be spared when so many are not, will only doom your faith.”
“What do you ask for, then?” said the boy.
Roger pulled the quilt around his shoulders. “To be forgiven,” he said.

Perhaps this series of books is about just that--forgiveness. Perhaps we have not yet forgiven ourselves or our neighbors, and perhaps we will never truly understand ourselves until we do.

[Connie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

“With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field. . . . Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.” (Acts 1:18-19)

The title, "The Judas Field," is an appropriate name for the site of the bloody Civil War Battle of Franklin. Twenty years later, the dying relative of two slain Confederate soldiers wants to visit the Tennessee site of that bloody battle, and move their bones to their hometown in Cumberland, Mississippi. She enlists the help of a former soldier, Cass, and two additional survivors of the battle join them on the trip.

Reliving that time in the war in flashbacks is a harrowing experience for the men. There are ghosts of the dead all around them at those haunted fields of Franklin. Even at home, the ghosts of the deceased soldiers never leave.

"There would be fighting before Nashville, then. Cass knew the Death Angel was with the column now, already making his choices. He kept Lucian close by, dragging him along by the collar when he fell behind, lest the Angel come peering into the boy's face."

The men in the regiment had lost many hometown friends in the war. Soldiers on both sides of the battle were praying to God, and young Lucian had philosophical questions.

"You look around, and you might be tempted to ask where God was when all this happened."
"Well, where was He?" asked Lucian.
"He was there," said Roger. "He was there all along, watching and grieving. . . "

"The Judas Field" is the third book of Howard Bahr's Civil War trilogy, a book about the war and twenty years later. The first book, "The Black Flower" is about a Cumberland man in Cass' regiment who is wounded at the battle. The next book, "The Day of Jubilo" is about Cumberland during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. All three books are beautifully written in Bahr's lyrical prose, and bring in elements of nature and the paranormal. The trilogy is highly recommended.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a novel can be simultaneously grisly and beautiful, it’s this one.

I’m frequently disappointed in historical fiction; it’s the rare author who can fully immerse me in a setting with a graceful authenticity – never contriving scenes that feel out of place or slipping up on the critical telling details. It isn't just Howard Bahr’s scholarly approach to Civil War research. His strong command of the era’s diction, coupled with poetic phrasing reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ranks him as a favorite of mine.

All of my senses were so engaged throughout the novel, I felt as though I trudged alongside the men on the hard-baked dirt, watching the vultures circle overhead. The dark Franklin battle scenes evoke the coppery scent of blood and gunpowder and unwashed men.

He felt as if he were filled with straw. He could almost see it leaking out his pants cuffs, his sleeves, the collar of his shirt. He unwound the filthy rag from his hand and dropped it in the dirt. The pus had drawn some maggots, which he flicked away like grains of rice, as if it were a thing every man did in the course of the day. You shaved, oiled your hair, chose a shirt and cravat, brushed the maggots away. Then you put on your mask, so that when you ran away, the boys would say you were brave.

My heart went out to Cass - a man grudgingly following orders while longing for his young wife and home and the calm of his steamboat on a Mississippi morning. I saw him at his best and his worst, wrestling with the ideals of honor and duty, raging at each new day’s futility, and learning to live with the scars and the ghosts still haunting so many years later.

Those very human emotions are what drew me in; all three books in the series are worthwhile departures from lighter reads even if the Civil War doesn’t particularly interest you. They are poignant studies in love and loss and vivid representations of the violence that changed the landscape of our country before any of us were even born.

The soldiers knew that the fields they would have to cross were still marked with the furrows of last year’s planting. No smoke hung in the woods, and the Harpeth had never run with blood, and the houses and churches and woodsheds were innocent, for a little while yet, of the cries of wounded men and the rasp of bone saws and the stink of chloroform and gangrene. They knew also that the Death Angel had made his choices, and for some, the cold ground was waiting. For the rest, they were marching into a darkness like nothing they had ever seen, into a shadow that no prayer or promise could shape a different end, but they prayed anyway – them who would – and made promises to God that they could not keep. Then they bent to the long miles, making ready, each man telling himself that surely he would see tomorrow.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this a moment ago, and I will be thinking about the Battle of Franklin and those who fought there for many days to come. I was lucky enough to read all three of Howard Bahr's Civil War novels without interruption. I highly recommend reading these in sequence if possible. Though, these books can easily stand alone.

Mr. Bahr is a very skillful and talented storyteller but beyond that, what really draws me into his novels are his use of sensory detail. In this offering, I was struck by the use of darkness to convey the shadows that fall on the hearts and souls of soldiers - darkness that settles into the very core of soldiers who may escape battle physically intact, but wounded nonetheless.

I regret that I had not read these books before I visited the site of this battle on the outskirts of Franklin, Tennessee. Perhaps, I will return and tour the site again. If I do, it will be with greater understanding and with a heavier heart than before. How could it be otherwise, this was truly one of the darkest moments of our Civil War.

Thank you, Mr. Bahr, for writing these very important novels, and writing them so beautifully. I sincerely hope that you have more stories to tell and I await them anxiously.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure why I did not write a review of this book when I first finished reading it. I definitely enjoyed the book. I’ve been reading quite a bit of Civil War lore. This one is a post-war tale and is quite moving.

[Robin Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muddled. At times, the perfect bittersweet chord. War is hell. Irritating to follow, but sometimes I was perfectly planted back in that time and space.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Majestic and Poetic - an Outstanding Experience

If you pick up The Judas Field give it about 30 pages. Up to that point I was fairly confused and lost. Then, it suddenly comes together and this book became one of the most powerful books I've read all year.

The book features two storylines - one set approximately 20 years after the Civil War and one consists of flashbacks about the Battle of Franklin. Both are interesting. Bahr's descriptions of the battle contain some of the most poetic descriptions of the most awful things that men can do to one another that I've ever read. Truly beautifully written.

On top of that there is an ongoing discussion about the role of God in war. Does he take sides? Has he forsaken both sides? This discussion is not done lightly. These are not post-modernist characters - they believe in God but they must reconcile that belief with the awful experience of war - what they did, what they saw done and why God has allowed it. Here's a snippet of this discussion:...

Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2011/...

[Shirley (stampartiste) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War is the last book that Howard Bahr wrote in his series of novels on the Civil War. Like the first two novels, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War and The Year of Jubilo: A Novel of the Civil War, The Judas Field centers around the effects of the Civil War on the men of the Twenty-First Mississippi Infantry of Adams’s Brigade, Confederate Army of Tennessee. Each novel stands on its own, but each novel contains elements and characters from the preceding ones. In The Judas Field, we follow the story of Cass Wakefield, his young friend Roger Llewellyn, and the conscripted young orphan Lucian (Lucifer) Wakefield.

Whether Bahr is describing the war or the trauma the soldiers carry with them for a lifetime, Bahr’s beautiful prose and raw descriptions kept me emotionally involved from beginning to end. So many times, as I would read, my chest would tighten and I would be on the verge of tears. No author has made me experience war the way that Bahr has. He leaves the reader traumatized long after the book is closed.

In each of his books, Bahr carries his message through the eyes of a handful of characters, although many other characters are also well developed. In The Judas Field, the older, 34-year old soldier Cass Wakefield, tries to protect 13-year old Lucian from the brutalities of war, but he cannot; and the next 20 years leaves them both scarred and traumatized. Neither Cass nor Lucian can put the pain of the war behind them, and each must self-medicate to make the memories go away.

This passage from Bahr, on the futility of war, brought me to tears:

God, if He loved as He was said to love, could not be blamed for this, could not have planned this back when the planets were still being flung across the sky. Something else-vanity, madness, illusion-had risen from the will of Man and laid all this under the moon. God grieved among them, as bent and helpless and alone as any, while each prayer of the dying pierced Him like a nail. God suffered more than any, for He had seen this countless times before and knew He would see it again and again, and the hammer would ring again and again. God was greater than them all and must suffer more than any, and suffer for them all.

[Eliece · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book probably contains the most poetic prose I've ever read, as well as some of the most horrific descriptions of maimed and dying men. As off-putting as that was, and with a thin plot besides, I was compelled to keep reading because of the incredibly elegant writing. Here is a description of the onset of a battle: "Quick the scarecrow rebel infantry came, running in the killing heat with muskets at the shoulder, eager to possess this land between ridges--every grain of sand, every gully, every wind-shook pine and rag of struggling grass--as if no other land in all the earth could be worth their dying. They lifted their voices, so that over the guns rose a quavering eerie cry like harpies descending, which drowned the manly hurrahs of the Yankees and shivered the soul of every man."
And here is a quote of the battle's aftermath: "Here lies a man who found beauty in all things; in birds, in the uncurling of a fern, in the shadows made by candlelight on a tent wall, and he would say to them, Is that not beautiful? trying to teach them how to see. They had learned from him, and because of him the world would never seem without grace in the smallest things. Now he has no eyes at all."

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful meditation on the scars that war leaves on the human heart and psyche.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I could give this book more stars, it was a really good read!

[Teresa Bower · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a fictional tale about the American Civil War about which I knew very little before reading. It is the third in a series of stories on the subject by this author but I wouldn't say it was necessary to have read the other two first. I found it quite hard going because I did not understand some of the Americanisms and there is a huge amount of description. I did not learn a lot about the reasons for the war but I did discover that it was like many other battles throughout time, bloody, with many lives lost and the lasting effects that it leaves on the survivors. It starts about twenty years after the war and then the protagonist, Cass, recalls what happened to him and two of his comrades during the battles. I did not quite understand the ending.

[Melinda Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Wow! What a writer! Bahr reminds me of Faulkner, Stephen Crane, with a good dose of Larry McMurtry. It's been awhile since I've read such a brilliant writer. This was a unforgettable book.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb descriptive writing with wonderful characters that takes you there with all the horrors of this most brutal war and its aftermath.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read two novels by Bahr. His talent for description is remarkable. He really puts the reader there.

[Ashley Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing style of this book may be my personal favorite, and from a book I never would have expected. Got this one from a library sale so it was judged exclusively by its cover and sleeve. Ended up ordering the other 2 of the trilogy not long after finishing this one. It touched on parts of emotional trauma that I have not often found elsewhere. Not a light read by any means. I'm not sure of the right words, but people with dark emotional traumas would enjoy this more than most. The Civil War that is occurring through flashback is the setting (from which they never truly escape), but the emotional damage drives the story. Brings the Civil War out of the names of people and places, bricks of text, and into living breathing terror. The sadness and emptiness that will always follow. The hollow acceptance that that time shaped, dictated most of their lives.

[Bob Brinkmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

These words apply to all three novels of Bahr's Civil War Trilogy. I'm posting the same review for each ot the three novels:

Bahr's depiction of war and the battlefield experience in his Civil War Trilogy is heavily influenced, I believe, by the Vietnam War (Bahr is a Vietnam Vet). Bahr portrays soldiers whose loyalties rarely extend beyond the few buddies at their shoulders and whose concerns rarely reach beyond basic needs. There’s not much difference between what we generally find in the fiction of the Vietnam War and what we find in Bahr’s Civil War novels: soldiers gripped by cynicism, fear, and despair; soldiers venting their frustrations on innocent civilians, through plunder and worse; soldiers immobilized by what we would now call post-traumatic stress. “In a battle,” says the protagonist of The Judas Field, “everything is wrong, nothing you ever learned is true anymore. And when you come out—if you do—you can’t remember. You have to put it back together by the rules you know, and you end up with a lie. That’s the best you can do, and when you tell it, it’ll still be a lie." Bahr’s great theme is precisely this: how one lives with the lie, not only as a soldier, but even more importantly, after the war, as a family member and citizen.

[Bank · Rating 3 out of 5]

In followup to Bahr's excellent book The Black Flower, the soldiers from a small Mississippi town revisit the battlefield of Franklin to bring home the remains of their friends. The book chronicles the intervening 20 years from the close of the war to to this trip, the devastation visited upon the South during Reconstruction, , and the permanent damage to the soldiers (PTSD). A heart rending story.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved The Black Flower and therefore looked forward to this novel also by Howard Bahr and was certainly not disappointed!! Cass, Lucian and the rest of the characters that are perfectly developed here brought the years during and after The Civil War to light in a way that I was not only marching with the Rebels, I was seeing the horrors of that War through my own eyes. Mr. Bahr is a literary reenactor and I was mystified as well as honored to be traveling through Tennessee with his soldiers.

[maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!
The story of the battle of Franklin (TN) though the eyes of 2 men and a boy.
favorite quote;
"In the last week of April, Leaf River stepped out of it's banks and walked over the land just to prove that it could." p.285.

[Cathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who think Post Traumatic Stress was invented in Iraq or VietNam. Very graphic, but terrific nonetheless. Read it in two sittings.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Bahr brings very vivid imagery of this bloody conflict to the reader. I felt like I was right there in the depictions of the battles.

[Karen]

Surprisingly captivating and evocative of the time period.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started to read but I needed lighter fare while on vacation. As it's about the Civil War, I released it in a spot which still bears the name of civil war activities, Battery Park Ave, in Asheville.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this story. It took me into the characters mind and memories. There will be a lot to talk about at our book club this month.

[Dave Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story, descriptions of the Battle of Franklin and its effects on soldiers and thoughts are awesome.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another triumph by Howard Bahr. Perhaps not as good as his first two novels, but still beautifully written and powerful.

[Kathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing.