The Valley of Shadows

by Francis Grierson

Grierson combines many aspects of Illinois mythology: prairie and dream, Lincoln and freedom, struggle and redemption. He also depicts the Lincoln country as a mythic Garden, inhabited by heroic pioneers who are swept into the valley of shadows, the coming national conflict . . . a unique achievement of uncommon power and symbolic depth---an Illinois masterpiece.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Pen name of composer, pianist and writer Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard

Born in Birkenhead, England his family immigrated to Illinois while he still was an infant.

He was involved with Spiritualism and stated that many of his musical performances were the result of the spirits of famous composers channeling through him. Shepard traveled through California in 1876 performing at several of the old religious missions founded by the Spanish.

Reviews

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author and his parents were immigrants from England and this book, originally published in 1909, is his reminiscences of his growing up in the 1850s prior to the Civil War, initially in Illinois and later in St. Louis, Missouri. The first few chapters tell stories about how people in the rural area they were in in Illinois, apparently in what is now Sangamon County, were involved with the Underground Railway and helped runaway slaves escape to freedom in Canada. Also told are stories of camp meetings, when itinerant preachers would come around and hold big revival services, to which people would come to from miles around. Later chapters deal with various desperadoes, his witnessing the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858, his family's move to St. Louis, and the election of 1860 and its aftermath - the start of the Civil War. There is a chapter detailing the exploits of General Fremont as he tried to get to California. A cousin of his, a General Grierson, led Union troops in daring raids in Mississippi and Louisiana and he discusses the riverboats on the Mississippi River and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi to the Union army led by General Ulysses S. Grant, which cut the Confederacy in two. A bit later, the author's family left St. Louis and moved to Niagara Falls, New York. Here ends his reminiscences. This book to me really makes one feel the atmosphere of this part of the nation in the run-up to the Civil War.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoirs of Francis Gierson of his life in Illinois just before Abraham Lincoln's election and the Civil War including topics like the underground railroad, attending a Lincoln-Douglas debate. Followed by a shorter part of Gierson working as a page for general Frémont and his cousin general Gierson's raid. It doesn't have as much mysticism as you would expect a Comet seen as a harbinger and a spirtual event that isn't that interesting.

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one because I toured his lovely home in San Diego. Loved the home..:more than the book! Hard to read because written phonetically in southern drawl. Didn’t feel like there was much of a plot till the last few chapters.

[Swjohnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most readers will be familiar with Frederick Grierson’s 1909 novel from the writings of Bernard Devoto or, most famously, Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore, an epic study of Civil War literature. In Wilson’s book, Valley of Shadows appears as the centerpiece of a chapter on the “Union as Mystical Ideal,” and it is a unique, often extraordinary fusion of poetic reflection and rusticity.

Grierson immigrated to Illinois with his English family in the 1850s before beginning a career as a celebrity concert pianist in Europe, and the novel has the distinctly ethereal, amber tint of distant reminiscence as he recalls his childhood before the Civil War. True to Grierson’s second vocation as a Spiritualist, it also has an affinity for the mystical, or an empathy for the charged realities that lie beyond surface appearances. The result is part prose poem, part memoir, part chronicle of a pastoral, idealized world on the verge of collision with violent historical currents.