It’s a wonder anyone tries to write historical fiction. You have to bring the past to life without resorting to lectures, stiff dialogue or tedious exposition. To be really good, you also have to avoid clichéd characters and stock situations, while not making the slightest misstep in historical fact. Mark Grisham (brother of Charlottesville author John Grisham) and David Donaldson have a story they want to tell about the American Civil War, the birth of the practice of psychology in the United States and the hand of God in human affairs. That’s a tall order for a debut set in a landscape already so thoroughly tunneled and trenched.
Their book, Bedlam South, revolves around Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, which was one of the largest military hospitals of its time. Dr. Joseph L. Bryarly is summoned by President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy to take charge of Chimborazo’s Wingate Asylum. This “newly renovated hospital for war criminals and the mentally insane” is nicknamed Bedlam South, after the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital in London.
Continuing the “insanity of war” metaphor, we follow Confederate soldier Zeke Gibson as he searches for his brother Billy, whom he last saw at Gettysburg. The cast of characters also includes a scrappy but loving Irish family, an aristocratic prostitute with a heart of gold, and a sadistic prison camp commandant whose physical scars hide a mutilated soul. And yet these stock characters manage to rise above cliché and parody in scenes that are by turns funny, frightening and moving.
Bedlam South is clearly well researched, but the authors have a ways to go to perfect their craft. The tone of the story often lurches into one more suited to a documentary voice-over: “…by 1845, the Potato Famine had forced this industrious family to the brink of starvation.” Characters explain their feelings to themselves in italicized thoughts accented with exclamation points! which, besides being distracting, indicates a lack of confidence in the writing. The authors do a great job giving their characters unique voices, but their use of dialect and corn pone wit goes overboard faster ’n’ a hog in a rowboat with a crab snappin’ at its tail.
I give Grisham and Donaldson their due: This book is not going to push Gone With the Wind or Gods and Generals off the shelves, but it adds something new to the Civil War genre and promises even better things to come from this writing duo.
