Scarecrow in Gray by Barry Yelton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Scarecrow in Gray
Book Review: One Man's Duty to the Land He Loves
Summary: 5 Stars
A North Carolina farmer goes off to fight a war in which he has no stake in this historical novel of the Civil War. It is the final months of a war reaching its inevitable conclusion, and most people know the Southern cause is already lost when Francis Yelton enlists against his better judgment. He is not a slave owner, nor has he any interest in the politics of the failing Confederate government. But the rebel army is desperate for men and if Francis does not volunteer, he will be conscripted. The author's elegant prose brings a poetic quality to this well-written novel. Francis, an ordinary but insightful man, sees the beauty of the land around him more clearly than most and recognizes the devastation of war as a grievous insult to the Earth and its Maker. He questions his reasons for being on the battlefield, comparing himself to a leaf floating in a river:
"The leaf doesn't have a say in where it's going. It just goes because a greater power takes it."
While Francis reluctantly shoulders his musket to shoot men just like himself, he worries about his home and his family, who must survive in a hostile world without him. Thanks to General Sherman's "scorched earth policy," Francis knows exactly what the enemy could do to his farm. But Southern deserters and outlaws pose just as great a threat. Scarecrow in Gray is a worthy read - the story of a war already lost and the men who knowingly served the losing side in defense of the land and the people they loved.
Book Review: Some pretty big questions about the art of war
Summary: 4 Stars
This is not a great book but a good book. I think the question that might be answered is this. "Can a peace loving, God fearing man enter into the killing fields of the Civil War and still remain the same person?" I believe this book covers that pretty well. Of course, that question covers today's fighting man as well. Do we change after we have killed? Does killing get easier? Can we ever be the same person we were? These are the areas I felt the book handled with pretty good insight. It's well worth reading.Book Review: Terrific novel telling the brutality of the Civil War
Summary: 5 Stars
"Scarecrow In Gray" is how the Confederate soldiers described their appearance as they struggled while fighting the Union soldiers. The author has written a novel that opened my eyes dramatically as I read about the rag-tag appearance of these men as they attempted to learn how to fight in a war, how to march, how to retreat, and how to overcome the mental and physical damage they suffered while attempting to fight for a cause that they were not sure they completely agreed with.
Francis Yelton was a farmer in North Carolina. All he wanted to do was farm to keep his family alive with the meager income from the crops he grew and those crops his family needed for year round existence. Francis was not a warrior. He wanted nothing to do with fighting against other soldiers that lived in the same nation he did. After time the pressure from the recruiters made him give in and, despite not wanting to leave his wife and children, he took off for the area the recruiters told him to report for training. Along the way he met another area farmer, Whit Whitaker, and they traveled off together, both reluctant to go but Whit had been conscripted whereas Francis was a volunteer. Both regretted having to leave their farms before the crops were ready for market, each knowing that their wives and children would bear the work of finishing plowing and picking and the other extremely hard work that a farm required. They only hoped and prayed that the war would not last much longer.
After a long journey to get to the camp, they settled in to the harsh way of living, eating, and merely existing. Food was in such short supply that even in this training camp the meals were very meager and many food items were non-existent. They had to learn fast since the Confederacy was so short of soldiers. They were vastly outnumbered by the Union troops in numbers, food, weapons, and ammunition. Clothing was also short. Uniforms existed only when some could be found. Whit and Francis did indeed learn fast and took off towards the battle lines with their ragtag fellow men along side.
The battles were such that both sides suffered terribly but with the vast overpowering Union army, there were too few Confederates fighting the Yankee masses. Scarecrow In Gray is not for the faint at heart. The description of the battles, the holes that the round bullets placed in bodies or going through bodies, the loss of limbs torn off by a shell, the piercing of men by knives in hand-to-hand combat, and the turn and retreat if you can move, all combined to tell some of the horrible sufferings caused by this Civil War.
Then when those survivors, wounded physically and/or mentally did retreat, their camps became a human nightmare of limbs being sawed off, the screaming of the many in pain, and very little and, in most cases, no pain reliever and certainly no sedative other than occasional alcohol to help during the surgeries. Many could not take this and deserted. If they were caught they usually suffered death for desertion.
Barry Yelton has captured a period in our nations history that we can't be proud of. He tells it like it was as he describes the suffering of not only the soldiers on both sides, but of the terrible toil the war took on the families of all these brave soldiers. They never knew from one day to the next if their loved one would ever come home. The death and injury toll was beyond what we can ever imagine. The close contact between the combatants made the fighting even more intense.
Book Review: The Last Throes of the Confederacy
Summary: 5 Stars
Francis Marion Yelton did not go off to war. The war reached into the distant mountains of North Carolina, carrying him away from his family and farm into the maelstrom of the last desperate months of the Civil War. The author, a descendant of Francis Yelton, a private in a Confederate regiment, has expanded on family lore to tell the story of a man who probably realized the war was lost even before he arrived in training camp. From the filth and tension of an Army camp to the terrors of Petersburg and the long hard road to Appomattox Courthouse, Barry Yelton recreates with measured prose the desperate battles of the closing months before the Confederate surrender in April 1865. In the midst of unspeakable horrors, he keeps his character tethered to a saner world by frequent references to the natural beauty around him: "The night it was a vast obsidian dome infused with sparkling points of light." But his beautiful prose is not at the expense of detailed and horrific descriptions of the battlefield where brave but outnumbered Confederates awaited the next Yankee onslaught. "Then we heard it, the low roar of the blue ocean, coming out of the woods, then the pounding of thousands of horses' hooves." Scarecrow in Gray is reminiscent of Cold Mountain and The Black Flower and is a compelling tale of one man's attempt to do his duty while preserving his humanity.Book Review: The Real South
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm not a Civil War buff, but I truly enjoyed this novel. It's an engaging read, and written from a perspective I'm partial to, that of an actual historical character. Here is a man who is drawn/forced into extraordinary events. The hero, Francis, is a plain, upcountry Carolina farmer, an ancestor of the author. He simply wants to take care of his family, and in the normal course of things, he must fight the good fight with Nature every year simply to stay alive. He doesn't want to soldier. He doesn't want to kill. He isn't a glory seeker. Events, however, have reached the point where the Confederacy needs every able-bodied man, so Francis does not shirk the call when it comes. From the moment he steps off his farm, the war, accompanied by starvation, looters, deserters and criminals--stalk him and his now solitary family. The tedium, the dirt, the hunger, the terror of a siege, the blinding moments of battle, the terrible injuries and even more terrible surgeries are all here. For me, though, it was the author's evocative descriptions of the natural world, as well as the bonding of these farmers-become-soldiers, which were the strongest parts of the book. At all times these seemed like genuine 1860's people, bred in the bone Southerners, too, with strong ties to their land, to their heritage, and wagon loads of common sense.