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---A review December 1st, 2006, issue of Kirkus (starred):
The Civil War turns a boy into a man in Olmstead's latest novel (after Stay Here
with Me, 1996, etc.)
In 1863, a woman on a farm on in the mountains, far removed from battle,
has a premonition that tells her the war is over. The fighting might continue, but
she knows that the outcome has been decided. She wants her husband to come home,
and she sends her 14-year-old son to find him. Since Robey knows that this quest
means the end of his childhood, he doesn't want to go. And his mother doesn't want
to send him. but both have fated roles in this austere, elegiac fairy tale. Like
all folkloric heroes, Robey is given gifts to help him on his journey, but the greatest
is the coal black horse. The boy is smart enough to know that the horse is smarter
than he is, and he allows the animal to be his protector and guide. As he travels
across a country at war with itself, Robey sees chaos and carnage-not just soldiers
killed by soldiers, but families murdered by unknown killers and women and girls
brutalized by bestial men. The actual battlefield is a bedlam of dead men, dying
men and scavengers who do not distinguish between the two. Olmstead juxtaposes scenes
of man made desolation with quietly lyrical depictions of the landscape and the
animals who inhabit it-including the coal black horse-but he doesn't sharpen the
contrast between disparate phenomena so much as he evinces a primordial universe:
a time before gods, before morality, a time in which war is as natural and inevitable
as birdsong in the morning. If the story ends on a hopeful note, it's not because
Robey has found redemption or meaning-neither is available in the world to which
he's traveled. It is because, while death is relentless and indomitable, life is,
too.
Powerful and poetic.
---A review of COAL BLACK HORSE from Library Journal:
"Sparsely told and graphically depicted, Robey's journey is a small-scale epic that
will find a
broad audience in...fans of Civil War historical fiction."
Full review:
Olmstead, Robert. Coal Black Horse. Algonquin. Mar. 2007. c.224p. ISBN
1-56512-521-5. $22.95. F
A coming-of-age story whose grim background is the Civil War, this work by Olmstead
(River Dog: Stories) follows 14-year-old Robey Childs on his quest to locate his
father, a soldier in that war. His mother's premonition sets him on the journey,
with no money, no clear direction, and just a worn-out horse to ride. Robey's fortune
in coming across an extraordinary horse to accompany him is soon cancelled when
the horse is violently taken from him, and he experiences privation and sorrow as
he tries to reconnect with the horse and locate his dying father on the battlefield.
Sparsely told and graphically depicted, Robey's journey is a small-scale epic that
will find a broad audience in public library fans of Civil War historical fiction.-Ann
H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
---Coal Black Horse review Publisher's Weekly
Olmstead, Robert (Author)
ISBN: 1565125215
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Published 2007-04
Hardcover , $22.95
Fiction | Literary
Ages
Reviewed 2006-10-23
Olmstead's new work (after Stay Here with Me) is a convulsive, bloody Civil War tale
that tracks a boy's search for his father on the battlefield at Gettysburg. At 14,
Robey Childs is on the cusp of manhood when he sets off from the family farm at
his mother's behest to find his soldier father and bring him home. A sympathetic
farmer loans Robey an uncommonly beautiful and sturdy black horse. On the road,
Robey passes carts carrying the maimed and dead, and bands of Native Americans and
runaway slaves. A chain of horrific trials begins for Robey when a man dressed as
a woman shoots him and steals the horse. He's taken prisoner as a suspected spy,
witnesses a girl's rape and is caught up in a carnage-drenched raid. However, he
survives the attack, is reunited with the stolen horse and sets out again, days
later finding his father on the battlefield, mortally wounded. Robey can't save
his father, but he can try to save the raped girl, Rachel, from further violence.
His return home and his testimony to what he saw forms a powerful, redemptive narrative.(Apr.)
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