A story of race, love, and Gettysburg, by way of the Vineyard
John Hough Jr. lives on Martha’s Vineyard and the island plays an important role in his entertaining historical novel about one Vineyard family’s experiences during the Civil War. Hough’s focus is the Chandler family and its blissful domestic life, which are soon ripped apart by war. At story’s open, teenage brothers Luke and Thomas Chandler are both secretly in love with the family’s Cape Verdean servant Rose, who’s treated like a member of the family. The Chandlers are abolitionists and when the war starts, Luke and Thomas volunteer for the Union army.
Once the brothers become soldiers, Hough interweaves scenes from the war with those from the home front. Hough displays impressive historical insight as he describes the everyday life of infantrymen in the army. As the Chandler boys join the ranks, they’re challenged by the grizzled veterans, who poke fun at their inexperience and abolitionist fervor.
The masculine camp camaraderie and the constant, joshing banter about food, women, and the inadequacies of the commanders give the novel a powerful realism that comes from Hough’s thorough research of the period. More than that, Hough shows us the boredom of camp life and the stunning violence of battle.
Here is Hough’s description of a Confederate artillery barrage right before an infantry assault on Union lines at Gettysburg: “The bending mile-long line of Rebel cannon exploded all at once and the world, in an instant, was a bedlam of thunder, flame, smoke, and whistling iron and steel.’’ The novel consciously rejects glorifying the war, instead depicting its heavy costs on the soldiers in terms of its psychological and physical trauma.
Luke and Thomas, members of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, witness the horrors of battle. When they march past a makeshift field hospital, they gape at what they see: “Below a window lay a scattering of amputated arms and legs. A few of the legs, taken off high, wore a pant leg and boot. . . . They looked alive, on the point of writhing and squirming, as if presently the legs would right themselves and hop.’’ Both boys, Hough shows, grow quickly into men.
As the Union army and the Chandler brothers march into Pennsylvania to face General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army, the tension builds toward the inevitable battle. Luke and Thomas have a falling out over their mutual love for Rose, but as the battle looms they reconcile. And simultaneously on the home front, Hough shows us Rose longing for the return of both men. She dreams of marrying Luke upon his return, but knows that the world would be against such an intermarriage: “Black and white together, though . . . the evil of the world would seek them out, stalk them to their doorstep. Where would they go?’’
Although readers know the outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg over those horrific few days in July 1863, the fate of Luke and Thomas will remain unrevealed here. Hough’s novel shows the family shattered in the aftermath of battle, as was much of the nation. As historical novels go, Hough’s saga of the Chandler family of Martha’s Vineyard delivers plenty of period accuracy, historical drama, and page-turning reading pleasure.
Chuck Leddy is a freelance writer who lives in Dorchester. 
