SPECIAL: The Wartime Journals, Dispatches & Selected Correspondence of KIRKPATRICK WEST, Special Correspondent of the New York Record, I1861-1865. - 2012 ABNA Entry

by Brayton Harris

A picaresque tour de force billed as "a novel history," SPECIAL is a look at the Civil War (1861-1865) through the eyes of neophyte journalist Kirkpatrick West, serving as a field reporter for the New York daily Record. West worked in the field with key leaders, military officers, and politicians on both sides of the conflict. He was not confused; he was a victim of circumstances. Quite likely, he was the only Special Correspondent, North or South, who was actually paid by newspapers on both sides. He was---quite likely---the only newspaperman who was almost hanged by the Confederates and came close to being shot as a spy by the Union Army. Along the way, West managed to carry on almost simultaneous affairs with his employer's daughter and a seductive Rebel spy---he was not confused, he was bewitched (in the romantic, not demonic, sense of the word). The author (in the guise of a truth-seeking editor) assembled most of the narrative from West's "long-lost personal journals, letters, and published dispatches." The trail of "West" ran cold with his last dispatch, about the time of the fall of Richmond. Then, operating in the mode of a literary detective, the author managed to solve a 150-year-old mystery: what, indeed, happened to Kirkpatrick West? Among the things he discovered: teamed with the spy, West managed to steal a portion of the Confederate treasury. And then? Read on . . . and be engaged by perhaps the most accurate narrative history of some of the more obscure actions of the Civil War.

19 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 2012