American Falls

by John Calvin Batchelor

American Falls opens on election eve in the fall of 1864. Lincoln's reelection is in serious doubt. The war is at a military stalemate. New York and Washington are rife with war profiteers, anarchists, and European spies. In Atlanta, General Sherman and his army await orders to attack the underbelly of the starving South. And, most dangerous of all, the Confederate Secret Service, based in Canada, has dispatched cadres of saboteurs to launch a coordinated raid against the North's great cities on election day.

The fatalistic clash of two men, agents of the rival secret services, is at the core of this rich compelling story based on the actual events of the last year of the war. The wealthy John Oliphant, originally from the North, has fallen in love with and married into the South. He is the most veteran of Confederate secret agents, and yet he remains unable to choose between his service to the Confederacy, his love for America, and his adoration of a woman who is not his wife.

Oliphant's adversary is Amaziah Butter of Bangor, Maine, a Union cavalry captain on temporary assignment to the United States Secret Service. Butter is intuitive, naive, and relentless in pursuit of the one man he comes to believe is the most dangerous in America.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Civil War, Novels

662 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1985

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this from a used bookstore in 2006. I don't remember why. Maybe it was a day I was yearning for fat books? Maybe the spine looked respectable (it does), because the cover is a graphic horror that upsets my feng shui. I don't think I had ever heard of John Calvin Batchelor, and I certainly had no special love for historical fiction or Civil War fiction. So, mystery unsolved!

This is a 570 page novel and I really didn't begin to acclimate myself to the plot until about p. 229. There are so many characters (most of them are minor enough that you can semi-ignore them) and the plot seems so dense (though it's actually deceptively dense) that I was confused up to p. 229. So was the protagonist; at one point he complained how confused he was by everything happening around him and I commiserated, "Tell me about it." There is not just the fog of war but also the fog of espionage.

Without the prologue, which briefly explains "the war between the Secret Services," I would have been completely lost. There were two Secret Services during the Civil War, the United States Secret Service and the Confederate States Secret Service. Both SS's are conducting a lot of espionage, both domestic and foreign. The U.S. Secret Service is trying to make sure Lincoln doesn't get assassinated, trying to break up domestic terror plots on Election Day 1864, and trying to track down Confederate SS agents, conspirators, saboteurs. The Confederate SS is trying to execute terror plots and sabotage and get England to recognize the Confederacy, and is conducting gun-running and cotton-trading. Complicating this picture for the United States is increasing civilian discontent because the war has reached a military stalemate in 1864. Americans just want the war to be over. If it doesn't end soon, their loyalties could conceivably change sides.

Also critical is a Cast of Characters. Actually there are two, one at the beginning that outlines the primary characters and one at the conclusion of the novel which adds dozens more. Also at the end of the novel is a timeline ("Calendar of the Civil War").

The two main characters are our protagonist, Captain Amaziah Butter of Maine and of the U.S Secret Service, and our antagonist, John Oliphant, secret agent for the Confederate Secret Service. Oliphant is actually from Philadelphia, but has married into a large South Carolina family and that is where his loyalties now lie. The novel alternates between these two men's third-person narratives. The book begins at Niagara Falls (Confederate spies did some of their plotting in Canada) and moves around to Washington, D.C., New York City, and the South Carolina coast.

Batchelor has fleshed out both men so fully that your sympathies lie with both of them. Most people recognize the moral superiority of the North in this conflict. But Batchelor refuses to turn Oliphant into a cartoon or a stereotype. Most viewers of The Sopranos also rooted for Tony Soprano. The relationship between Butter and Oliphant reminded me of the movie The Fugitive, where Harrison Ford is on the run and Tommy Lee Jones is hunting him down, and there's a tension between them that's part hate, part mutual admiration.

There's an easy, unforced lyricism to Batchelor's writing.

Oliphant realized he was in the hands of the Princes of Serendip as soon as the coastal schooner, Chicora, cleared the windward side of St. Helena Island and came about for the broad mouth of Port Royal Sound. Here was a wholly other and profound world. It had a biblical feel, and compelled him into metaphor as it drew him into its completeness, Chicora sliding south with the flow tide for a brief stop to offload supplies to exotic boats (long, open craft carved from cedar trunks and rowed by very dark-skinned Negroes) come out from shore. The Sea Islands appeared to Oliphant like living puzzle pieces that God, in his playful mood, had chosen not to close against the swampy face of the Carolina coastline. And here, at Port Royal Sound, was the entrance to the richest heart - the verdant marshlands, green river ribbons, and airy loam of the boundlessly profitable Sea island cotton plantations. But that was money-talk, Oliphant thought, and he did not care, for now, to weigh credit and debit when there was such sun-blessed wonder to enjoy.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met John Calvin Batchelor while we were both students at Union Theological Seminary in NYC in the seventies. A bit older than I, he was already well-established as a writer for a number of alternative city papers &, pseudonymously, as the author of mass-produced porn novels and scifi novellas often appearing alongside name authors in the old Dell Double paperbacks. He had made a bit of a name for himself already as a proponent of the once-popular theory that J.D. Salinger was Thomas Pynchon. He was, and probably still remains, an interesting conversationalist. I haven't had any contact with him since '78, but hope that some day he publishes a version of Ambroseleader, a space opera the manuscript of which he shared with me (a space opera wherein all the interstellar warships are named after the Patristics).

Because of this connection, I buy every Batchelor book I find, reading them immediately. That hasn't been too much. I did his Birth of the Peoples' Republic of Antarctica (weirdly reminiscent of R.A. Lafferty), his forgettable potboiler about political conspiracy (reminiscent of lots of shit), and American Falls.

American Falls is a Civil War novel based loosely on actual Confederate/Copperback conspiracies run, in part, out of Canada--thus the title's reference to Niagara Falls. The protagonist is a Federal grunt pulled from the lines for special duty in this regard. He is well characterized, believable and likeable. The representation of mid-nineteenth century North America is done well, well enough to not raise any red flags. The plot is interesting.

John received some attention nationally for his aforementioned Birth... novel. He has not, so far as I've noted, received much since. This novel is actually better, displaying a (god, this sounds conceited--I just write these rambling reviews!) greater maturity as an author. He deserves more attention. This book deserves more attention. Check it out.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

not quite what I expected.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another bigass Civil War novel. Excellent