Long Remember
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Kantor, Mackinlay. Long Remember. New York: Coward-McCann, 1934. In print: New York: Forge, 2000 (with introduction by Jeff M. Shaara).
Sometimes cited as the "first realistic" Civil War novel. Although earlier novels like Miss Ravenel's Conversion are equally realistic in their own idiom, Long Remember is a vivid exercise in seeing combat through the "defamiliarized" perspective of civilians.
Dan Bale is a native of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. When his grandfather dies, he must come home from the Minnesota frontier, where his experiences as an Indian fighter have made him a confirmed pacifist. Neighbors in Gettysburg suspect Dan of Copperhead sympathies. But Irene Fanning, the dissatisfied wife of a neighbor who is a Union officer, falls in love with Dan at first sight. Meanwhile, it's June 1863, and rumors of battle become more concrete by the day, till the storm breaks over Dan, Irene, and all the inhabitants of Gettysburg.
Links
- A brief biography of Kantor by Martin E. Nass