(2002)Civil War an postbellum novel set in New Orleans focusing on Flower (slave girl) and Willie Burke (ancestor of author) as they deal with the South losing and the remaining high emotions from that loss. Results in the killing of plantation owner and father of Flower accidentally by her friend and abolitionist Abigail who was trying to avenge the rape and terrorizing of Flower by Ku Klux Klan members and employees of Flower's father.KIRKUS REVIEWThink the rumbustious Dave Robicheaux novels (Jolie Blon's Bounce, p. 437, etc.) have so little mystery that they could dispense with the mystery formula altogether? Here's a test case: a Civil War/Reconstruction yarn that's also a fictionalized family history.Not that Burke deprives himself of murder, from the opening execution of runaway slave Sarie Jamison by Rufus Atkins, the brutal taskmaster of Angola plantation owner Ira Jamison. On the eve of Fort Sumter 24 years later, Sarie's (and Ira's) daughter Flower is a laundress in New Iberia, Burke's Yoknapatawpha. She's been befriended by abolitionist Abigail Dowling and secretly taught to read by Willie Burke, who proves that anti-authoritarian bias of his heroes can't be blamed on the War Between the States, since he seems to have been born mouthing off. Beginning his military career by insulting Captain Atkins, he marches off to war with his friend Jim Stubbefield. A third musketeer, pro-slavery law student Robert Perry, vanishes into the shadows while Willie and Jim face their baptism at Shiloh¥an experience so harrowing that Willie moves up to insulting General Nathan Bedford Forrest before he returns home to switch from battling the Yankees to battling the likes of the White League and the Knights of the White Camellia. By then, the leading characters have long settled into roles familiar from Burke's contemporary fiction: the idealist who can't help picking fights (Willie), his familiar (Jim), the all-powerful Father of Darkness (Jamison), his untouchable enforcer (Atkins), the heroine whose soul provides a battleground for good and evil (Abigail), the victim whose body ditto (Flower), and their seething compatriots (everybody else).Shorn of any mystery but the mystery of evil, this roiling, deeply old-fashioned tale is less successful as a stand-alone revisiting of The Clansman and Gone With the Wind than as a kind of all-purpose backstoryÂ¥or, more accurately, a prototypeÂ¥of the Robicheaux saga.Pub Date:Nov. 1st, 2002ISBN:0-7432-4471-0Page count:320ppPublisher:Simon & SchusterReview Posted Online:May 20th, 2010Kirkus Reviews Issue:Sept. 15th, 2002

(2002)(audio). 1st book I've finished by Burke. Good with language of the south. This is story of a group of people from a small town in Louisiana and how they are affected and how they cope with the Civil War and its aftermath. Very good.

I liked the plot of this book, but the dialogue was a little bland and the 21st century words and phrases in it made me lose interest. ( )

Of the 12 books JLB I've read, this is his best work so far. The love pours out. The love for his heritage, his forefathers, the human feelings among the townspeople, the love of the community that transcends the political issue of Negro slavery or freedom. If one reads to learn differeing points of view, this is a must-read for any American interested in any way in the South and its history. ( )

I liked this book - it focuses more on the characters and their development than actual battles/strategies in the war. The story moved along fairly quickly (the book is less than 300 pages.) The main character is based on an actual Confederate soldier who was the author's ancestor. This was the first book I had picked up by this author, and I would try another one. ( )