Battlefield

by Peter Svenson

Book Overview

"This compelling memoir is by turns charming and chilling. As the artist-author restores a forty-acre farm field and builds a house in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, making the mistakes of a city... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571197981
• ISBN13: 9780571197989
• Release Date: November 1992
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Dreans

This book is about dreams and making them come true. If you are a Civil War person, it is about owning a piece of a small but important battlefield from the war. It is about keeping that part of the field in a state consistent with history. If you are trapped in a Dilbert world and dream of being a gentleman farmer, this is about making that dream come true. It is about crops of hay, fields and restoring equipment. In each case, this is a loving enjoyable book about dreams. The author did an excellent job creating his dreams and their reality on the battlefield of Cross Keys in Virginia. His ability to communicate feelings and moods gives the reader a real understanding of his feelings. There is a strong Civil War component to this book but it is NOT a battle history of Cross Keys. You will pick up some history on how Hallowed Ground has been treated since 1865 but this is not about history but dreams. This is a wonderful book for anyone with dreams!

Not Just Good History, Great Writing, Too

The battle at Cross Keys, Virginia is not one of the more renowned conflicts of the Civil War. My family had been flummoxed by the lack of information when researching my great-great grandfather's teenage career as a soldier in the 39th New York regiment that fought there. Enter Peter Svenson to save the day, pulling the experience of the battle out of oblivion into an extraordinary narrative. A landscape artist, he had purchased a 40-acre rhomboid shaped tract on which to build a home and studio and to farm hay. He belatedly discovered the land to be the actual battlefield. Turning to original source material, including personal letters, memoirs and formal military reports, he summons a very detailed account of the events and environment of 8 June 1862. Not only does the battle become an important lens through which to critically assess the strategies of Fremont (North) and Jackson (South) and the fortunes of each side in the early part of the war, the account is highly revealing of the experience of the common soldier. Though there were thousands out there that day (far more Union than Confederate, though the North lost this one), Svenson takes pains to identify the regiments and their locations, and what happened to them. I now know where my ancestor most likely fell and the horror he endured for hours until he was picked up and taken to the "hospital," a store that had been appropriated for a surgery. I am astounded that he made it out of there with his limbs intact, that he survived the everpresent danger of disease Svenson describes. Please know there is more to Svenson's book than the battle history, however: he intersperses the history with accounts of life on the land in the late 20th century. In doing so, he shows how deeply connected the present is to a very traumatic part of our national past. It's a thoughtful book, made all the more enjoyable by the author's strong, pleasant voice. BATTLEFIELD was nominated for a National Book Award when it debuted; while it ultimately did not win, it is tops in my estimation.