The Falling Hills
Description:... On April 12, 1864, two Confederate cavalry brigades commanded by General Nathan Bedford Forrest overwhelmed a Union garrison of white Tennessee Unionists and former slaves at an outpost in western Tennessee. The Confederates then slaughtered the Federal troops in the Civil War's most notorious act of racial hatred. In his epic novel The Falling Hills, Perry Lentz uses the largely forgotten Fort Pillow Massacre to explore the erosion - or confirmation - of human character under the strain of war. The Falling Hills centers on two young officers from opposite sides of the conflict. A Tennessee planter and a Confederate veteran, Captain Leroy Acox reluctantly returns to service in Forrest's newly recruited cavalry corps and, though he hates war, eventually succumbs to its hysteria. Lieutenant Jonathan Seabury, an idealist from Boston who requested "a Negro branch of the service", sees the war as his opportunity to educate and enlighten former slaves. Seabury, however, quickly becomes disheartened by the dishonesty and disorder of his men, the corruption of garrison life, and the prospect of defending the ill-equipped outpost. Opening with a mindless act of violence, the novel places Acox and Seabury at odds in one unforgettable battle. When The Falling Hills was first published in 1967, Time and the American Scholar praised the novel for its vividness, persuasiveness, and realism. In his memoirs Charles Scribner, Jr., described it as one of two books he published at Charles Scribner's Sons that deserved far greater critical and popular notice than it initially received - the other being a novel that was made into the successful movie Cool Hand Luke. With its return to print, The FallingHills revives the savagery of the Fort Pillow Massacre while revealing the dehumanizing impact of war upon its participants and victims.
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