In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister devastated and alone. The siblings, recently bereft of their parents, are unusually attached, and Summerfield fears his untoward feelings for his sister. This rich backstory is intercut with scenes of Hayes' soul-altering hours on the march, at the front, and in the Washington military hospital where he eventually finds himself, mute and unable even to write his name. In this twilit realm, among the people he encounters is a gray ...
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In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister devastated and alone. The siblings, recently bereft of their parents, are unusually attached, and Summerfield fears his untoward feelings for his sister. This rich backstory is intercut with scenes of Hayes' soul-altering hours on the march, at the front, and in the Washington military hospital where he eventually finds himself, mute and unable even to write his name. In this twilit realm, among the people he encounters is a gray-bearded eccentric who visits the ward daily and becomes his strongest advocate: Walt Whitman.
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Dennis McFarland's "Nostalgia" is a deeply textured historical novel of the Civil War, a portrayal of America, and a coming of age story. The portions of the book that describe combat are set in the horrific Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. Ulysses Grant had assumed his role of commander of all the Union Armies and had assumed immediate command of the Army of the Potomac. The Battle of the Wilderness began Grant's Overland Campaign which, with terrible slaughter, led the following year to Appomattox.
The book tells the story of Summerfield Hayes, 19. Hayes lives in Brooklyn with his sister, Sarah, 21 in a comfortable home with two servants. Hayes is devoted to playing the new game of baseball ("base ball"), described and praised exhaustively throughout the book. Summerfield's and Sarah's parents had died in 1860, three years before the story begins, leaving the brother and sister emotionally dependent on one another. Late in 1863, young Hayes becomes increasingly alarmed at his feelings for his sister. He enlists, leaving his sister alone, and receives his first combat experience in the slaughter of the Wilderness. McFarland describes the slaughter of the battle and the troop movements in detail and with fury. Hayes suffers wounding and shock. He loses his hearing. He is left behind as his comrades press forward after the battle.
The Union forces eventually find Hayes and take him to a military hospital in Washington, D.C. McFarland again has done his research and offers a convincing, realistic portrayal of the fetid hospitals which killed as often as they healed. The nature of Hayes' condition baffles the staff. Hayes cannot speak or write and his physical wounds, if any, appear superficial. Some of the military personnel on hand accuse him of malingering. McFarland makes clear at the outset that he is describing what today is called post-traumatic stress disorder. But the book is no mere clinical account, as McFarland tells the story with dramatic tension and develops a series of characters, including the doctors, nurses, aides, and other severely wounded men in the hospital. Walt Whitman becomes the most captivating figure in the novel as he visits and comforts the soldiers and takes a particular interest in Hayes. Whitman brings life to the novel in a way that McFarland did not initially foresee. In a brief afterward, he writes of Whitman:
"Fiction writers are often chagrined by how characters, given any kind of a decent chance, appear to evolve on their own terms; they refuse to bend to our will and turn out very different from how we conceived them. Never have I felt so controlled by a character as I did by Walt Whitman. ... [H]is spirit, intent on being cast in the best possible light, seemed to elude my every effort to darken him."
McFarland develops his story is an evocative, episodic way that captures Hayes' condition. The shifts in time and place in the several chapters takes some getting used to. Particularly early in the book, extensive scenes take place in Hayes' mind as he lies on the forest floor of the Wilderness with events of his life in Brooklyn and in combat running through his mind.
The book is beautifully thought through and tightly written. Each of the three basic settings of the story, Brooklyn, the hospital, and the Wilderness get well developed with a group of accompanying characters. Through the person of Whitman, McFarland offers a tough mindedly optimistic picture of the United States. Whitman's vision and love, the novel suggests, offers a path to the redemption of both Summerfield Hayes and of the United States following the Civil War.
