Book Around the Corner

Job’s Coffin by Lance Weller (2021) French title: Le cercueil de Job. Translated by François Happe.

Lance Weller is an American writer born in 1965 in Washington State. He wrote three books of historical fiction, Wilderness (2012), American Marchlands (2017) and Job’s Coffin (2021) Wilderness and Job’s Coffin are set during the Civil War and American Marchlands is set on the Frontier between 1815 and 1846.

Wilderness is available in its original language but American Marchlands and Job’s Coffin are only available in French, translated by François Happe and published by Gallmeister. He’s one of those authors available to the French public and no other and I feel privileged. Lance Weller wrote a note to American readers on his website and you can read it here.

Back to the book.

When the book opens, we’re in 1864, in Tennessee and the Civil War is raging. Bell Hood is a young slave who fled from her plantation and hopes to reach the North, orienting herself with the stars. They’re in the Appalachians and she’s with Dexter, who’s also trying to reach the northern states. They don’t know where they’re going but they know what they’re running from. None of them has plans or a place to reach where people will help them.

Bell focuses on stars, on a constellation of stars that her father called Job’s Coffin. Dexter wants to meet Lincoln, that’s his goal, because one must have a goal.

Then we go back in time in 1862 at the terrible Battle of Shiloh in Hardin County, Tennessee. I didn’t know anything about it but Wikipedia says there were almost 24,000 casualties, 3,500 deaths. Jeremiah Hoke was there, a member of the Confederate Army, dragged in the battle by his friend Charlie King. Hoke was horrified by the battle, by the hatred and the violence he detected in his friends and around him. He was seriously injured and after a farmer took care of him, started a journey of wandering in search of redemption.

Weller describes the devastation of the Civil War. Bell and fellow slaves keep walking to the North but there’s danger everywhere: hunters who search for runaway slaves and two armies walking from one battle field to the other. Hoke doesn’t want to participate to anything related to slavery, like revealing where runaway slaves are or fighting among the ranks of the Confederate army. His actions put him in danger too.

As the novel progresses, we slowly understand what ties exist between Bell and Hoke, how their master’s and father’s actions defined their fates. Bell had to leave Locust Hall, the plantation she was born in and the traumatic experiences she lived through there, that’s all she knows. Hoke also left this plantation, the son of the foreman and witness of the violence against slaves. Both are silent rebels against the system they live in. It’s a tiny rebellion but it’s there.

Bell hopes to start a new life and Hoke hopes for redemption.

Reading about battles of the Civil War reminds me of reading about battles of WWI or the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The incompetence and ego of generals is staggering, leading a whole generation of men to butcher each other. Lives were worth nothing. I don’t know much about the battles of the American Civil War and I don’t care much for military strategy, so I didn’t investigate further the importance of the Battle of Shiloh.

I enjoyed reading about Bell and Hoke and see how individuals fare when war brings chaos into their lives, and as far as Bell is concerned, what slavery entailed. We need not forget that and apprehending the violence of it through the eyes of characters brings facts and numbers more tangible. Literature is a school for empathy and historical fiction is a worthy media to help us picture what happened to people in past centuries.

Weller is also an outdoor man and it’s reflected in his descriptions of the Bell’s and Hoke’s walks, bivouacs at night, life in the wilderness. I’d love to add quotes to this billet but I don’t have any one in English. His writing is fluid, perceptive and the characters ring true. They are nuanced and Bell has an aura, an inner strength that impacts and impressed the people around her. People want to help her and be the best version of themselves.

My friends say I read a lot of books related to the condition of black people in the USA and about racism. It’s true, I guess. It’s a topic I find fascinating and it goes a long way back. Back to White Dog and to some extent, to Proust and his description of the Dreyfus affair.

The issues of racism and slavery puzzle me and horrify me. I’ll never understand how people look at a black person and fail to see a fellow human being beyond the different color of skin. I guess that it’s hard to escape it when you were raised into this belief, something Lehane explores in his last book. I’m also interested in how countries overcome civil and colonial wars trauma, so there will be more about that too.

So yes, there will be more books about that in the future. Meanwhile, I recommend Job’s Coffin, at least to readers who can read in French, the only lucky ones who have access to this book. This was my March read for the Une année avec Gallmeister challenge. The theme for March was Girl Power and I think Bell fits the bill.