Jacob's Ladder:

by Donald McCaig

A richly textured, carefully researched novel of the Civil War focuses on the life of a young heir to a Virginia plantation, Duncan Gatewood, who conceives a child with a mulatto slave and fights in Robert E. Lee's Confederate army.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Civil War, Fiction, Historical, War, American Civil War, Southern

525 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Donald McCaig was the award-winning author of Jacob’s Ladder, designated “the best civil war novel ever written” by The Virginia Quarterly. People magazine raved “Think Gone With the Wind, think Cold Mountain.” It won the Michael Sharra Award for Civil War Fiction and the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction.

Donald McCaig wrote about rural American life, sheepdogs, and the Civil War. He also wrote poetry and wrote under various pseudonyms.

Reviews

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of the years during which the Civil War was fought. It is not just a story of the war but also the stories of many non combatant Virginians who lived during the time. My attitude toward this work turned 180 degrees as I worked my way through it. My first thought was that it moved slowly, the author's style is slightly oblique and he wrote it in the vernacular of the time. It is not an easy read nor is it a feel good story but it is altogether worthwhile. If you decide to give it a try I advise you to not skip the "Acknowledgments" section at the end.

[Laurie V · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard for me to pin down all my thoughts about Jacob’s Ladder. It’s a sweeping narrative that follows several different characters’ experiences living through the Civil War. The book takes place mostly in Virginia and is told from the Confederate point of view. There’s an effort to give equal time to black and white characters which works nicely to compare and contrast what members of both races went through. However, there are so many different characters that I don’t feel completely satisfied with how the story ends. Some loose ends are left hanging and I had a lot of questions after I finished the novel.

The prose is absolutely beautiful to read. Author Donald McCaig has a talent for writing about awful atrocities and bloodshed, yet still making it poetic. Having said that, this is a very violent book. Violence never bothers me, but reading page after page about men and horses being blown apart weighed on me after a while. I read a good portion of this book on an airplane and had to make an effort not to cry on the flight.

I did enjoy Jacob’s Ladder, but I think McCaig could have written an extra 75-100 pages to tie everything up better. Even the anchoring story about Marguerite as an old woman didn’t feel completely fleshed out. A lot of pages are filled up describing battles that might have been better utilized for plot lines. The reader can of course draw his or her own conclusions, but it’s frustrating that there are so many characters and stories that could have been better if McCaig had given more detail.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting look at slavery during the war. An old woman is visited by a young government worker in the early twentieth century who has been tasked with interviewing former slaves in order to compile a version of "their experience". By listening to the old woman, you get an insight into various lives - a runaway field slave, a house slave, a slave forced into marriage and then sold, a confused plantation owner who misses the days when everything made sense to him, several confederate soldiers, a few slaves turned Union soldiers, and the list goes on. The accomplishment is to provide the reader with a range of views, experiences, and dependencies.

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book. It starts out slow to develop the many characters whose story you follow during the war. Though not gripping at first, after around 80 pages I didn't want to put the book down. The real stand out (for me) are the descriptions of the battles - I have read other civil war historic fiction - none stood in comparison to McCaig's incredible ability to detail the battles in such a way that makes you feel the urgency and fear of the battlefield occupants. It was rather unnerving how McCaig brings you into that moment. An incredible book - I highly recommend it for history/military/civil war buffs.

[Jaime · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually, I didn’t quite finish this book. But I invested so much time in it, I’m counting it, dammit. I was disappointed in it — I was looking for much more story about the people, and much less descriptions of battles. I expected it to be a story about Duncan, Maggie, and Jacob. And since Maggie was essentially the narrator, I was disappointed that there were large stretches where you just didn’t read anything about her. What it comes down to is that I just lost interest in the story.

[Tonya · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you pick up Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War expecting a Gone with the Wind or even a North and South you'll be disappointed. The book blurb seems to promise a love story superimposed over the American Civil War, it's not really true.

The main characters are the family Gatewood and their extended family plus the plantation slaves, the book starts with Midge (also known as Maggie and Marguerite later) telling her story to a WPA girl pre-WWII era.
The novel focuses on not just the story of the people tied to Stratford (Gatewoods' plantation) but the story of how the people of Virginia handled the war.

I found the battle scenes realistic based on other non-fiction works, the characters seemed to act and speak as those of the era. I just found myself not caring much about them.

All in all a well written book, factual when it matters and inventive when it doesn't but I was looking for something else when I picked this one up so I can't mark it down too much. It's a solid 3 stars.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more than I expected, and the author didn't let his research get in the way of the story, characters or his immersion of language and mannerisms of the time. Only strike against were the way too frequent "brushes with greatness" with historical figures, that cheapened the story. One or two would have been believable, but this mechanism got overused. Still, I liked it immensely, and am interested in his other work now.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure this book was about some thing. I’m just unsure about what…

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, probably realistic, great tie in of characters at the end. Curious book, people made many choices that are different than I would have- much more thought being placed on where decisions left you, class, honor.
Hearing Maggie’s story was often a challenge due to the number of characters to follow but once I was halfway through I figured out who mattered to the storyline and who didn’t.
Definitely a lot of war detail- Maggie’s outcome was great, if a bit lonely and sad.
Family and friends torn apart by love, societal expectations, loyalties, war, duty, honor.

Weirdest, most useless character by far was Alexander. He could have just died and the story would have improved. Weird. Weird.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good historical fiction describing the Civil War Era and the circumstances between slavery and white landowners. A beautiful love story between Duncan who is heir to the Gatewood Plantation and Maggie a mulatto slave. The Civil War is told through the eyes of both Southern and Northern fighters and what a senseless war it was.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story gave me an appreciation for the civil war. I was amazed and disturbed by how many men willingly became soldiers and how many died. I thought it was very sad that so many could be so brave and that their cause was not truly realized for another hundred years. As for the specific characters in this story, I liked a few but didn't feel attached to any of them or their plights. It would have been nice if the author didn't bounce around so much or have so many main characters. He didn't get into a lot of depth with any of them.

[pianogal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this book as much as I had hoped. The author spent a lot of time detailing various battles - in gory specifics - and I thought he could have done more to develop the characters. It felt like the book revolved around the war, and the people involved were just secondary. I hope his "Gone with the Wind" prequel is better.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book but could not bring myself to love it. While it is a well written and historically accurate account of a Southern family in the Civil War, I never felt close to the characters. Only in the last third of the book did I find the story sufficiently compelling to make me want to read more than a few pages at a time. So many books have been written on this general theme that a new one has to be quite remarkable to stir my enthusiasm.

[Vicki Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the very best historical fiction about the Civil War in Virginia that I have ever read. McCaig really did his homework, and I felt that he did a marvelous job of presenting the war through the eyes of both white soldiers and families and African American soldiers and families. The details about the battle and places were historically accurate, and I was very sorry when I reached the last page.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brought the civil war to life in a way that other books have not. Through the multiple characters, it showed how the war impacted every part of society - from the slave to the wealthiest planter. I would recommend this book to anyone.

[D. Krauss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stopped reading Civil War epics in the late 80s or so. After you’ve finished North and South, you’ve pretty much completed the genre, especially after watching the TV miniseries with that smokin’ hot Kirstie Allie as Virgilia Hazard. And that’s pretty much because the genre follows more or less the same line: dissolute Southern family and/or dissolute Northern family are torn apart by the Civil War, the eldest sons of both families trying to stay friends and not kill each other in the various battles in which they, by pure coincidence, end up, both elder sons progressive and open minded and conflicted by duty honor country, both opposed to slavery but eldest Southern son not quite ready to give them up and eldest Yankee not quite ready to accept them as human beings. Interspersed are scenes of slavery and war’s cruelty, sex and miscegnation, willful daughters and half-crazy wives and defiant slaves, and you’ve pretty much got the entire plot.

Except for this one.

Jacob’s Ladder is really focused on the lesser characters, lesser in the sense that they are not the eldest scion of either a Yankee or Reb family, but are their victims: the slaves Maggie and Jesse. This is actually Maggie’s story for reasons I will not go into because that would spoil, but Jesse is the far more interesting character. He is the only real man in a book filled with a lot of macho preening self-absorbed males who think they’re men.

Duncan Gatewood is the requisite eldest son of the dissolute southern family and, sure enough, he right away does something rather dissolute: gets Maggie pregnant. Maggie is forced into a slave marriage with Jesse and then sold off, while Duncan is sent to the Virginia Military Institute for his sins and, well, of course, that means he’s in the Confederate Army when the war breaks out. Jesse has been in love with Maggie forever, but she not with him, and when all of this happens he says, okay, that’s it, and escapes north to join the Union Army because he is the only character in the book who stands on principle. He is going to find the woman he loves and he is going to fight for the very freedom he was promised some eighty years previously when that Declaration of Independence was signed. Man, it sure takes a long time for society to catch up with an idea, doesn’t it? I mean, how long before everyone said, yeah, Copernicus, you’re right, earth goes around the sun?

The entire novel revolves around Duncan and Maggie and Jesse, although thousands of other characters pop in and out, most of them fun and important, such as Silas Omohundru, slave trader and blockade runner who figures quite prominently in Maggie’s life and who, at first, you’ll hate, but give the guy some time. There are horrific battle and hospital scenes that will curl your hair, and various brushes with the big Civil War personalities that will make you realize 19th Century America was a smaller place than now.

But Jesse makes the entire novel. I kept reading it just to see what he would do. He was resolute and flawed and determined and in the midst of disaster he stood his ground.

He’s the guy you want beside you in the foxhole.

[TBV (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This multiple prize* winning novel had me glued to its 520 pages for several days, squinting over its fine print (how I wished for a Kindle edition!), but it has been well worth the effort as this is one of my favourite books of the year (2018) thus far. The blurb on the back cover of the book doesn't do it any favours as there are plot spoilers. Whilst billed as a love story, please note that fortunately this novel is not a Romance.

Most of the story takes place during the American Civil War. It is an ambitious novel with a large cast of characters. Some of these characters will be brave, some will be cowardly and some will do as needs must during the course of this saga. The reader will encounter cruelty, racism, slavery and war, as well as love, compassion and even some humour. Love, limbs and lives will be lost, other lives will be irrevocably changed. By the end of this novel no one is untouched by human wrought grief and suffering. This reader too was touched by the suffering and the many lives lost by both sides of this conflict.

There are many ironies here. Religious slave owners carefully refrain from cussing and they observe the Sabbath, but think nothing of flogging the living daylights out of a chained slave, or separating families in order to sell family members for profit or to conceal scandal. How does one reconcile piety with slavery? One of the characters, Sallie, becomes a felon through an act of compassion and is reviled by some, but it is she who personifies goodness.

Years after the Civil War when many of the characters in this book are already long gone, a young lady's job is to interview people who had been slaves. Those who are still around are pretty old like Miss Marguerite who volunteers to tell her story. Her story in turn unfolds into the stories of the other main characters, and we learn of events from their points of view. Miss Marguerite's story starts before the war. Starting at Stratford Plantation, Virginia in 1857 the action later moves to the various battlefields of the war and eventually back to Stratford Plantation.

The people you'll encounter in this tale might be be plantation owners, slaves, slave traders, common soldiers or generals of either side, patients or medical staff, prisoners or prison staff, blockade runners, "Maroons", Brethren, Partisan Rangers, gamblers at Johnny Worsham’s Gambling Hell, whores, or even Richmond society. Besides a cameo appearance by Abraham Lincoln, there are the Gatewoods, the Byrds, the Danzigers, Uther Botkin, the Kirkpatricks, slaves Midge, Jesse, Rufus, Jack and others. Love some, dislike others, but there are some heart-stopping moments when certain events overtake some of these characters. You might laugh and you might cry, but I don't think that indifference is an option.

"And when they were done they stood for a time, no longer in ranks, each man lost in his own privacy, becoming the man he would be for the rest of his life."

Recommended!


*Jacob's Ladder by Donald McCaig was awarded:
The John Eston Cook Award
The Boyd Military Novel Award
The Michael Shaara Award for Best Civil War Fiction

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacob’s Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War is by Donald McCaig. This is a novel of the Civil War as told as an interview by a WPA worker. The young girl is helping document the memories of ex-slaves as they remembered the Civil War. The WPA created a job for many young people as they were sent out to document what ex-slaves remembered about their life under slavery and after the Civil War. These young people set out to interview pre-selected people thinking it would be a glorious adventure and full of exciting stories. What they got was pretty dull remembrances from people who had not been very inspiring. Most slaves didn’t remember much except for their daily lives. Other than the lack of food, more escape attempts, and life going on as normal. Most did not know what was going on outside their small world. They mainly knew from stories they heard their elders telling. They could not read the newspapers themselves nor was there television or radio. Most of the ex-slaves interviewed had been small children at the time of the Civil War.
Donald did a great deal of research for this book. He used a great number of newspaper stories, letters, memoirs, etc. Then, he changed these stories to fit his narrative. The result is a very interesting book. He does talk about the people left at home once the war broke out; but his main emphasis is on the battles that took place and how these young men handled those.
He sets the story up by having a young lady come to a home expecting to interview the maid, Kizzy. However, she ends up being told the story by the mistress of the house. Her father and friends told her to go back to the WPA and ask them to put her somewhere else to get a better story. However, she is pulled into the story much like the reader is drawn into the book, and she returns again and again to get the rest of the story.

[Kathy Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because there is so such negative publicity now about the Civil war I must make some comments about this novel. Reading this book gave me an appreciation for those men who fought for the Confederacy. This period of our nation's history was very bleak. And this war really happened on our nation's soil.
This novel gives the perspective of a prosperous Virginian family. A son, son -in law will both experience the war as well as the family at home. Yes this family owned slaves and the life of the slaves is also developed.
The battle scenes are genuinely gory. There also is the plot of a neighbor who befriends a runaway slave and is physically punished and incarcerated for it.
Medical conditions are also developed because one of the characters becomes a nurse for the Confederate 's hospital.
There also is the destruction of Richmond as the Civil War is soon drawing to a close.
The negatives of this novel: the term nigger is used frequently by blacks to label black men who fought for the Union as well as to label black slaves. I found this offensive.
The author made a point of saying the Confederate soldiers had to leave their weapons at Appomattox. Having toured Appomattox on 2 occasions I have been told by film and historical guide that the Confederate soldiers were allowed to take their weapons home.
The ending chapter was weak. It needed a different ending. Too many characters of the future were added in haste to try to wrap up the story. Poorly done.

[Ginger Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a most interesting book. It is thought-provoking, but I don't think it is a great book. My experience was a little eerie since I listened to this on audio while driving thru the Virginia countryside where many of the battles take place. The descriptions of the battles are graphic, as are the scenes that take place in the hospital.

I think the book fell short with Marguerite's story. She is very sympathetic, but I don't understand why she would have felt the need to tell her story as part of the WPA's project to collect the life stories of former slaves. She and her family had passed for white in Virginia and California for decades. I don't know that Marguerite would have decided to tell the truth of her background in the 1930's. I also felt that her husband Silas's decision to join the Confederate Army as Richmond was falling was a little too reminiscent of Rhett Butler's enlistment as Atlanta burned in Gone With a the Wind.

The book is worth reading and I think it accurately portrays the impact of the War Between The States.

[P.M. Brannock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it pains me to say that a Yankee is capable of writing a story about Virginia, McCaig was, and he did the story justice. His prose is fair and honest, and I appreciate the research and thoughtfulness that shines through this novel. In today’s political climate, I doubt that a current novelist would bother to explore each perspective as delicately or objectively as McCaig did.

The acknowledgments and afterword at the end of the book are well worth reading. Because they are integral to understanding the story and the author’s thought process, I recommend sticking with the book after the end of the last chapter through til the back cover.

[Ralph Maughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well Done

Beautiful prose, exacting research. One can ask no more of any writer. I would follow McCraig from Fort Sumpter to the Appotomax even if he added 100,000 more words.
The most compelling feature of his writing is his ability to put our hearts and minds into the characters, even those we find morally repugnant. The only truly wicked major character is Alexander Kirkpatrick. He is the nexus of the worst in both the South and the North, the Judas Iscariot for both since he believes in nothing but his own anger and resentment.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be late coming to the party as I just read this book. I was mesmerized by the prose, the dialogue and could not wait to return to each day's reading. The characters were true and I wanted to know each story and how it all turned out for each. Author's writing is superb. Though I knew April, 1865 would close the saga, the ending seemed satisfying to the storyline. Highly recommend. (It is graphic in details of war, well researched.,)

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoy historical fiction, especially about the Civil War and the south, this is a great read. I am very interested in the Civil War and this book follows the entire war focusing on the Gatewood family, their slaves, and others they are close to. The characters are so well written, the places and battles are real, and it’s very well written. It’s a long book but I was so engrossed that it did take me long to finish. Definitely recommend!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story follows the lives of a western Virginia plantation plantation, community and slaves during the civil war. I found that its varied views of different aspects from those who stayed home, those who fought, those who supported, those who suffered, and those who profited to be very interesting. To cover so much material, the book is on the long side but worth sticking with it.

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a historical novel about a Virginia family during the Civil War. In its 70 chapters, it chronicles the lives of the Gatewood family and their escaped slaves chronologically through the War. I had a hard sense making sense of all the characters in the beginning, but it eventually gives a full picture the War from the Confederate side.

[Mercedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too many story lines. While I loved the concept and I do not mind author's switching directions to follow different characters, there were too many here. A couple of the characters did not need to be followed. Some recounts of battles were good, but I found occasional commentary or references that were asynchronous. Good, but long at times.

[Daniel Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you would like to understand the Civil War from the perspective of a small section of Virginia this is the book to read. The hardship, the misery and the suffering of the enslaved are all documented here. It is a great way to understand the war as a microcosm of what ailed American society at that time. It is also a reminder that war is not glorious.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read this book at this point in history was perhaps the best possible stroke of luck or providence. As a Northerner, I have never been able to grasp the ideas and beliefs that elicited so grave a response as men taking up arms against their fellow countrymen. Read this book to discover that, and to be reminded why we must never let it happen again.

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book but hard to get into in the beginning. Trying to figure out who everybody is and how they are related is confusing, once you figure it out it is a very enjoyable read.