Thomas Keneally is an amazingly versatile writer who seems to do everything well, whether it be intense dramatic fiction, such as Schindler's List, Confederates, and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith; biography, such as An American Scoundrel, about Gen. Dan Sickles; or, in this case, an amusing roman a clef and gentle satire.

Fictionalizing the life of a TV personality named Jacko, who suddenly confronts and often embarrasses ordinary citizens in their homes, Keneally brings his huge personality to life by acting both as an omniscient narrator and as a caring and sensitive confidante to Jacko, sometimes participating in the action himself. As Jacko, an Australian who has found a niche in New York TV, conducts a search for a young woman who has been kidnapped and held prisoner for five years, Keneally shows Jacko to be a man of some conscience, but also an unregenerate womanizer, egotist, and sometimes insufferable boor.

Jacko's father, Stammerin' Jack, and his irrepressible mother Chloe, who live on a remote cattle ranch in The Northern Territories; his opera-loving brother Frank, who lives the effete life of an aesthete in Sydney; and various lovers and wives join with some of Australia's most notable (real) characters to enliven Keneally's narrative with tongue-in-cheek anecdotes and moments of sensitivity and great poignancy. Though Keneally disguises these real characters with pseudonyms, he does not otherwise change the details of their lives, so the novel becomes a sort of semi-autobiography of Keneally, as he includes stories of these characters and his relationship with them. Keneally is obviously the unnamed narrator, just as Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature, is clearly the model for Michael Bickham.

Keneally obviously had great fun writing this book, and his ebullience shines through. With self-deprecating humor and a light hand, he pokes fun at people's foibles, while respecting the people themselves. Jacko's larger than life persona parallels the wide-openness of Australia itself, and Keneally's love for the country and its people, along with his need to escape sometimes, shine through.

When this book finally reached North America, i urged my book discussion group to read it as a quality example of Australian writing. The reactions were nearly identical to those on this page - Jacko is a creep and the ending seems to drop you unfulfilled. Urging the group to reconsider the options Jacko faces on the last page against the character he's presented up to that point, the e-Mail over the next month became almost daily exchanges. The discussion group members realized how powerfully Keneally can depict people and what a superb story teller this author is. My discussion group was astounded to learn that nearly every character in this book actually lived.

Jacko is the story of a son of Outback Oz having made the unlikely transplant to New York City. He's a major figure in New York television because he has a 'gimmick' - he literally 'crashes' people's homes first thing in the morning. Like all major figures, people come to him to solve their personal problems. In this case, it's a missing daughter. Jacko seizes on this occurrence as both a means of enhancing his image and perform a act of moral value. Jacko's quest for the girl and the demands of his own family's issues allow Keneally to take us from New York to the Australian bush and finally to the Berlin Wall on that fateful night it was reduced back to the level of Berlin streets.

Keneally's ability to portray persona is amply demonstrated in his depiction of Jacko, writer Michael Bickham [anyone know who this really is?], Outback station owner Stammer Emptor, film director Mark Torlucci and the others. Perhaps Gunter is the only person in this narrative without a specific life model. The most poignant scene depicts the death of 'Barry Larson' who is based on a photographer Keneally worked with in producing a pictorial essay about life in the Australian bush. Chloe Emptor clearly achieves dominant status in this book. Only Australia, and its Northern Territory, could produce such a figure, and a writer like Keneally to portray her. Having read the autobiography of the woman Keneally bases this figure on, she should be gratified at the depiction.

Too many American reviews of Keneally mark him as an "Australian" writer as if that somehow limited his abilities or his work lacks some indispensable element. Nothing could be more misleading when assessing his work. His stories are universal in both circumstances and character development. That he lives in Australia and often [but not always] sets some or all of his tales in that environment shouldn't detract from the quality of his portrayal of real lives and circumstances.

This book is too valuable to be relegated to the "Out of Stock" bin. Its historical value is surpassed only by the quality of Keneally's writing. He has few, if any, peers in the business of story-telling. Jacko is a book i have no hesitation about pulling off the shelf and starting again at page one. He can hold the reader chained to story line, character development, or portrayal of environment. This book should be returned to the active list - order it, read it, spread the word of its worth to others. Keneally should be Australia's next Nobel for Literature.

A big hearted book written about a big hearted man. People said that the ending was a let down, but I feel it is what makes the book a classic. JACKO has genuine Australian charm, written with sympathy for the characters.

Office of Innocence tells a somewhat familiar story (that of a young priest experiencing an inner crisis) in a different way. The fact that the story is set takes place in World War II helps because it gives it added drama. Frank Darragh is tempted by a POW widow, and he's faced with difficult choices because of his feelings for her. This novel is also a mystery story. All the plot elements all come together very well. Office of Innocence is not Mr. Keneally's best book, but it's readable and enjoyable.

Clad equally in priestly vestments and an aura of innocence, Frank Darragh suddenly finds the world crowding his faith. Two great bastions of Empire have succumbed to Japanese invasions, and Frank's Sydney stands imperiled alone. As the remaining outpost of Empire, Sydney has become a military crossroads and, if the Japanese haven't invaded, the Yanks have. They are ubiquitous - on the streets, in pubs, and taking up with Sydney women. One of these women, a "POW widow" encounters Frank, setting off a disturbing chain of events.

War is busy time for young men - committment, training, combat. When that young man happens to be a priest, further emotional conflicts needing resolution arise. Social pressures become intense, with people seeking solace wherever it can be found. Frank's confessional has a queue. He's even more popular than the parish priest - "You'll have to put in for overtime!", Fr. Carolan tells him. There's more involved than Frank's light penances. He feels the need to reach out and bring consolation instead of waiting to be asked. That leads him to cross parish boundaries in support of an AWOL soldier. Crossing that line adds further complexity as Frank's confronted with race issues. Between the temptation of a woman, the startling revelation of child abuse, and a murder, Frank leads a hectic existence.

In one sense, Keneally's plot is relatively transparent. His characters follow predictable paths once they're introduced. Although not a "mystery" writer, he provides a murder and the perpetrator can be only one character. With Keneally, this is hardly a shortcoming. His strength is character development, and whatever your opinion of Frank Darragh, Keneally has portrayed him with his usual finesse. As with all Keneally fiction, this book ends with the resolution of a moral dilemma. The impact of that issue has little to do with the plot - it's wholly in the hands of the protagonist. Keneally's command of language and his ability to reveal inner feelings is unmatched and well demonstrated here. Pick up the book and follow the response of a man's discovery of the world. ...

To lose faith in another is disappointing. To lose faith in oneself is tragic. To lose faith itself is devastating.

Australian author Thomas Keneally, after 24 novels, is an acknowledged master of grafting intimate issues onto a greater framework of world issues. In his Booker Award-winning novel Schindler's List (later adapted to film by Steven Spielberg), he presented a man who found his humanity while Germany lost its way. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith surrounded a man's crisis of identity during the colonization of Australia.

Now, in The Office of Innocence, Keneally proffers a well-worn plot device, a priest undergoing religious uncertainty, contrasting his moral struggles against the larger canvas of Australia during World War II.

Frank Darragh is a scrupulous priest who has secured a reputation as a "merciful confessor," furnishing him row upon row of pious old women and "numerous platoons of self-abusers."

Encroaching warfare, and fear of Japanese attack, takes its toll on Darragh's parishioners. Confessions grow in complexity, morality becomes blurred, and, for Darragh, "an age of automatic grace had passed."

As his naivety lessens, his grasp on the nature of his calling similarly begins to decline. He is censured by his monsignor. And when a parishioner is murdered, an image-conscious church becomes anxious over its wayward clergyman.

Keneally has a unique vantage point from which to view the priesthood. He studied theology with an eye toward being ordained, abandoning the quest in 1960. His clarifications of church rituals, and Darragh's satisfaction with the nuances of repetition, lend the story an ambiance of authenticity.

Keneally's priests, despite their vocation, are resolutely human. Darragh is neither an example of the stereotypical saintly priest or of the Catholic embarrassments of recent events, but is a man who cannot reconcile the difficulties life offers with the compulsory innocence of his profession.

Torn between desired action and forced contemplation, he asks, "Was Catholicism and its orthodoxy sometimes better designed for the timid, for twitching souls who came too often to confession, for the scrupulous so hungry for absolution at every hour?"

Keneally parallels Darragh's distress with Australia's fragile standing in the war. Theological arguments of the church in society shadow Australia's sense of itself as an observer to the world's struggles, as well as victim in "the geography of dread."

Yet despite Keneally's tightly wound scenes of genuine tension, the whole seems less than the sum. His muscular storytelling steamrolls over the finer nuances of his narrative.

Somehow, the more thematically expansive efforts of Schindler's Ark and The Great Shame (covering eighty years in Irish history) seem more intimate, more focussed. The story lacks the innovation and boldness of his finest works, and suffers in its familiarity.

A priest in the thralls of doubt is a archetypal plot device, employed in both the mundane (Richard Vetere's The Third Miracle) and sublime (Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Seville Communion). Keneally deserves kudos for bringing fresh insight and style to an overworked genre. From a lesser author, the novel would impressive in its achievements. The Office of Innocence, a good novel from a great writer, disappoints only because of the talent involved.

A claustrophobic novel about a turn of the century Antarctic expedition which turns into a murder investigation when one of it's members is found dead on the ice. The bulk of the novel involves discovering the victim's past and how it interconnected with the lives of the other team members. An interesting, light-weight novel with a twist at the end. Read it on a snowy weekend.

If you've read everything you can find on Sir Ernest Shackleton's trips to Antarctica, seen the traveling exhibit with Frank Hurley's extraordinary photographs and memorabilia from the Endurance, and still crave more about Antarctic expeditions, this book will keep you interested and dreaming of such exploration for a few more hours.

Written in 1978, this is a murder mystery set near the South Pole in 1909, the same year as Shackleton's first expedition and five years before the Endurance epic. A similar crew of explorer-scientists and sailors, with the same attitudes and prejudices that one finds in the literary record of the Endurance, perform similar tasks under similar conditions, with one big exception. Captain Eugene Stewart (sharing initials with Ernest Shackleton) must also investigate his own crew as he attempts to unmask the murderer of Victor Henneker, the expedition's representative of the press, who intends to record the voyage for posterity.

With the same care for historic details and period attitudes which one sees in some of Keneally's later, prize-winning books, such as Confederates and Schindler's List, Keneally reveals Henneker to be a blackmailer who holds damaging information about almost everyone in the crew, their reputations vulnerable because they have violated the inflexible moral strictures of Edwardian England. A cuckolded husband, the secret lover of a married aristocrat, a mountain guide who may be responsible for a fatal excursion, a man tried for theft, and others "guilty" of homosexuality, Zionism, illegitimacy, and heresy reflect the pettiness and rigidity of "civilized" life in England and offer motivation both for the murder of Victor and for participating in the expedition. The book's conclusion is also consistent with the mores of the day. While this may not be the greatest mystery of all time, it is certainly one in which the author has done all his homework, well worth reading for the context it provides for other (real) expeditions of the day.

This is not really a book of Antarctic exploration. Keneally uses this ploy to show us a group of 26 men who spend many months in complete isolation during arctic darkness. The men have different backgrounds and different professional specialties. An uneven lot, if there ever was one. But, of course, they completely depend on each other. They must work as a tight community - and we await Keneally's thoughts of this "experiment". He introduces Victor Henneker, a journalist who has collected unsavory facts on people he meets, including most of the members of the expedition. Henneker gets killed, and his notes now become public knowledge. How do the explorers deal with what they now know about each other? Do they look at them now with different eyes? Most important: do they still trust each other?

Keneally gives us a fascinating portrait of people under the stress of a predicament they cannot flee. A fascinating book.

Bring Larks and Heroes draws a stark and realistic picture of life in a penal colony.

It is overlaid with dread and a pervasive sense of doom. It is not an easy book to read, due both to the bleak subject matter and the convoluted writing style.Kenneally is a master craftsman, providing some stunning descriptive passages,the images evoking smells, sounds and sights with immense clarity. However his erudition at time leads to writing that is obscure and difficult to follow

The finely drawn characters span a range of diverse personalities, from the idealistic to the brutish and mindlessly cruel. The central character, Phelim Halloran, is intelligent, imaginative and spiritual.His response to circumstances did not seem satisfactory to our group and is one which sends him spiralling into disaster.

We are also presented with a range of social issues and viewpoints, set against a harsh,bleak backdrop of penal colony life.

Bring Larks and Heroes was a challenging read and one which elicited much lively and rewarding discussion.

Review by Glen Waverley 6 Book Discussion Group, Victoria Australia

The best way to review Keneally is to use the allotted thousand words to cite quotations from his work. Bring Larks and Heroes is an item within a well established genre - Irish writers conveying their intense feelings of who and where they are. In this case, however, the Irishman is a third generation Australian, the place is half-way around the planet and it's in the founding years of the Port Jackson prison colony.

Keneally's Corporal Phelim Halloran represents nearly every aspect of Irish traditions. He's even been jailed for taking part in a subversive meeting before shipment to Australia. He wasn't shipped as a felon, however, but as part of the guard contingent. Beset on all sides by the harshness of British military governance and the Australian environment alike, he's confronted with a succession of difficult choice s. Ann Rush is a fellow Irish Catholic who Halloran considers his "wife" even without the sanctity of a Church-mandated ceremony. Keneally gives her a subtle power to influence Halloran's thinking. She becomes a pivot point of his considered options. Confronted by a rebellion of Irish prisoners, who seem to be the only ones capable of organizing one, Halloran studiously avoids taking any lives. But a new opportunity arises, one promising a new kind of freedom. Halloran makes a choice; with eternal consequences.

Is it stereotyping to say that an Irishman remains Irish no matter where the British or Nature has driven or taken him? Keneally's ancestry gracefully emerges through his words. He is able to convey the mixture of Celtic traditions, Roman Catholicism under Anglican rule, felon and Marine interactions, brought together on the eastern shores of The Last Continent. While relating his tale of people embroiled in heart-rending events, Keneally remains able to convey the uniquess of the Australian environment. The morbid greyness of gum tree forests, sky and sea in collusion to overwhelm the senses, the sterility of the coastal soils, all conspired to bend the minds of the English exiles.

Keneally is Australia's bard. In fact, he's the Bard of the English language. His prose echoes the the beauty of the best bardic poetry. He has no peers as a storyteller, building characters from minimal sources. He's done it with THE PLAYMAKER, WOMAN OF THE INNER SEA, GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST and many others. Even his works dealing with more contemporary events present us with people we come to know intimately by the end of the story. Of all the historical fiction he's done only THE PLAYMAKER displays his talents more fully than does BRING LARKS AND HEROES. This book is truly a paean to his abilities and it's time and location mustn't deter you sampling what he can accomplish. He is a man of feeling, and without making his characters into something artificial, he can impart those feelings through them. If you haven't experienced Keneally, this is a fine place to start. There's a price, though. Like me, you may find you won't stop with this and your shelf will be filled with all his work you can find.

One of the most perplexing novels I've read recently, "The Survivor" tells the story of a man who, forty years earlier, endured a doomed Antarctic expedition.

Alec Ramsey, the survivor, is sheltered in his professorial position at an Australian university, dealing with the daily squabbling among a variety of academic misfits (and their territorial spouses and lovers). Ramsey's lifelong guilt about surviving the trip is amplified by the fact that he slept with Belle Leeming, the wife of the leader of the expedition; his memories are haunted by the details of Stephen Leeming's death; and his equilibrium is unsettled by the news that Leeming's body has been discovered in the glacial ice. Although Ramsey acts like a man with a dark secret, it's unclear how much of his recollection is a result of post-traumatic stress and how much really happened.

Nearing the end of his life, Ramsey is haunted by his past and afraid of having his memories challenged; he fears "a change in the essence of his life, a change as absolute as death." He has lived with his nightmares for so long that he doesn't want them minimized or publicized by the grotesque charade that will inevitably result when the body is exhumed. Nevertheless, by the end of the book, as Leeming's experience is subjected to increased scrutiny, the reader (as one of the minor characters puts it) is not quite sure "what it was all about."

But Leeming's plight is only half the story; the other half is an extremely witty parade of academic caricatures (auguring the works of David Lodge) that lightens the seriousness of Ramsey's burden. Combined with Ramsey's self-mocking reflections, the tone of the book is both poignant and cynical without ever being depressing.

Given the success of Keneally's "Schindler's Ark" (the basis for "Schindler's List"), as well as his numerous literary awards, it's baffling and sad that this thought-provoking and pleasing book is out of print.

I kept thinking it would make sense or get better or have some substance. It was remarkably bad! I threw it away after reading 200 pages or so and it only has 277. What a waste of time and money!!!!!!!...

I kept thinking it would make sense or get better or have some substance. It was remarkably bad! I threw it away after reading 200 pages or so and it only has 277. What a waste of time and money!!

The central idea of this book, it seemed to me, has to do with abandoning one life for another. If one thinks of this as essentially the American idea of reinventing oneself, Thomas Kenneally informs us that it is also very Australian, and rightly so, for Australia is a land that is full of hiding places for those who wish not to be found. The protagonist is a woman who can no longer bear the agony of her existence after the death of her children--and so attempts to do away with her identity and her history by traveling to the Outback under an assumed name. Simple enough, one might think--but here is where Kenneally's genius takes root, for we are taken on a wild and wooly ride as Kate becomes deeply embedded in the lives of a diverse set of characters, unschooled and totally remote from the sophistition and nuance that formed her own upbringing. A wild bunch indeed, they are incredibly touching in their sense of loyalty and courage. There is a surreal quality to this adventure that is heightened even more by the introduction of two pets, a kangaroo and an emu, native species which are somehow incorporated into this world of carnival and misadventure--an Australian "Don Quixote." A brilliant and stirring enactment--let them try to make a film of it!!

I made a mistake with this book. I should have read the first page before buying. I don't mind if a novelist wants to reduce a Confederate general's deified historical status a peg or two, but come on, Keneally describes Stonewall Jackson masterbating on the very first page of chapter one! And that's the problem with this book; every character in it is a degenerate with nothing but sex on his or her mind, as if there was no war going on all around them. Eventually, I got tired of reading this garbage and at the half way point just chucked it into the...can. However, if you want to read a good novel of the Civil War where the Civil War is indeed the primary focus, look elsewhere.

An Australian author writing about the American Civil War? It is not as silly as it sounds, and in the hands of Thomas Keneally (Schindler's Ark) it is quite engaging. Stretching from the Seven Days Campaign to Antietam, this novel covers the lives of a group of soldiers in the 'Stonewall Brigade' of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The chief protaganists are a farmer (Usaph Bumpass), his wife at home (Effie), a painter with Northern sympathies (Decatur Cate) and an ameteur composer (Gus Rameseur). Don't be put off by the length - it is an addictive read that you will find hard to put down. It is a very good worm's eye view of the reality of war: hours of sheer boredom followed by moments of sheer hell. The battle scenes are quite good and even the romantic sub-plot remains sensible and realistic. My only gripe is with some of the better known historical characters - for Civil War buffs the faults will be obvious (including the maps in the cigars) but for ev! ! eryone else it should not be too much of a problem.

The novel is very good and it would have been five stars but for the unsoportable/tiresome (for the reader) southern slang speech of the protagonists/characters. It's hard to understand if you're not a redneck and restricts the scope of potential readers.
I can't stand the way novels by Kipling regarding the soldiers in India (Scot&Welsh&English-Cockney-variant) are written because of that... if it is suposed to be funny for the reader, for me it's not the case.
Plain english is good enough for me (even with the OCASIONAL southern speech or slang added, but not a whole novel wich reads as gibberish sometimes, sorry but I do not think is a good idea WE KNOW THEY ARE CONFEDERATES ANYWAY! ...).
When I read a novel is mainly (not just) for enterteinnment, not for doing an excersise on cryptography... (sounds and feels like WORK).

This treatment of Lincoln is inadequate at best. I've read other biographies in the "Penguin Lives" series (e.g. Jane Austen, Napoleon) that were fine within the scope of the series' purpose, but this one fell short. For example, the author seems to be projecting his own religious views on Lincoln when his characterizes Lincoln as an agnostic without much proof . This is reminiscent of how Lincoln was characterized as a kind of stain-glassed Evangelical for so many years by writers of that persuasion. Lincoln is more complex than this in his religious perspective. Likewise in the evolution of his views on slavery. My suggestion is not to waste any time or money on this volume, but instead to pick up a much better one-volume biography: "With Malice Toward None" by Stephen Oates. In his source notes at the back, Keneally himself states that this is his own favorite book about Lincoln.

It is not clear why Keneally was chosen to be the author of this bio on Lincoln. I would have thought that there would have been many other more notable and capable historians to whom the publishers could have turned.

The series is deliberately designed to present deliberately short biographies of famous figures. Always a tough job and the decision tree of what to exclude, and in turn what to include would be very difficult.

Lincoln was a very complex character, complete with faults, but also stunning personal gifts. His life was full of failure, up until the time he became president, when he found his true calling, and skill sets.

Keneally tries to paint a picture of Lincoln that really doesn't grab the reader. It's not a bad effort, but neither does it grab the opportunity that this form of biography allows, particularly to people who are looking for an entry point into Lincoln, but don't want to (as yet) tackle a many hundred page biography.

A fair effort.

Lincoln and the Civil War are complex subjects and Mr. Keneally did a superb job of describing both in a concise manner. Although the book was primarily factual it was a pleasant read and it increased my sense of awe for Lincoln.

The book blames everyone save the Eritreans who in 1960 were ourselves split in 4 different camps, most vulnerable of which were the highland Christians late to emerge as "liberators" overwhelming the majority Muslims and other minorities.

Kenealy was predictable as a journalist of the age in his inability to report the facts without delving into the adorative fiction one side or the other chose to feed him.

For the uninitiated this passes as Gospel, who after all would doubt the author of "Schindler's List".

Yet his hatred and condemnation of Haile Selassie and later the Marxist(not Stalinist) administration of Mengistu Haile Mariam comes not from the culpability of these two in Eritrea's and Ethiopia's woes but from a singular and unrequitied love Kenealy has for the no less Marxist EPLF that would later Crown Issayas Aferweki, placing him as an Emperor beyond reproach in Asmera Palace.

Such is Kenealy's forgetfulness of his sacred trust as a reporter that the half truths he was fed and reported, now gussied up under the questionable respectability of a book,live not as a signal accomplishment but as a damning written record not of those he points fingers at but of his serious romantic lapses in judgement for the truths of the Kunama, Afar, Akele Guzai, Saho, Muslim, Bilen people of Eritrea he did not write about and that are written in the indelible ink of human suffering.

Idris Awate's(a Hero of the Eritrean Revolution) massacre of the Kunama, a group who Thomas Kenealy's friend Issayas Afewerki continues to kill and imprison is conveniently ignored. The EPLF(later renamed the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice, PFDJ) conduct in mistreating Red Cross, and Amnesty International volunteers, execution of captured Ethiopian Prisoners(documented by eyewitnesses from western Media) remains unmentioned. Kenealy neglects to mention even at the earlier stages, the EPLF's and later Eritrea's stormy relations with Sudan, Djibouti and its own Muslim population. The liberation struggles of the Akele Guzai, Bilen, Saho, Afar and the fight both for suffrage and self determination of Eritreas forgotten Muslim populace are ignored.

These would lead to successive Wars an armed confrontation and low intensity war through EPLF assistance of FRUD, a terrorist Marxist cell in Djibouti, OLF and EPRP terrorist cells within Ethiopia, guerilla warfare against the Eritrean Liberation Front, Kunama Liberation Front and a Confederated Army of Afar Liberation under the leadership of Sultan Ali Mirah.

I was very disappointed in Thomas Kenealy's effort as I had thought his "Schindlers List" was well researched and showed human compassion and fortitude at their best.

I could not understand why his book chose to portray the worst of Eritrea as her best.

It is plain from the few reviews posted here that some extreme opinions are held regarding this book. The reviewer who faults Keneally for a one sided picture of the Eretrian war is quite correct that the book is not a balanced account of the long and complex conflict. But then the book is not reportage, it is fiction, and as such - a story told from the point of view of a journalist with no prior knowledege of the war - it is perfectly reasonable. He takes sides and sympathizes with his hosts. He demonizes their enemies. Is this accurate history? No. Is it a great story? Yes.

Keneally is a writter of consumate skill whose characters and settings have a sense of heightened reality. This book, whatever it's factual failings, is vivid, powerful and moving. I knew nothing about the Eretrian conflict myself when I read the novel, and was so moved by it that I was motivated to do a lot of follow up research on the subject. If Keneally meant for the book to be propoganda, then shame on him (though, if so, it is most uncommonly good propoganda). If he didn't, then the accuracy of the book is of issue only to those who have already taken sides and can't appreciate a fiction that takes an opposing point of view. And I really believe that anyone who is moved by this book will at least do, as I did, enough additional study to realize that Keneally's story is only part of the Eretrian story - one that deserves to be known.

Why only 2 and half stars? This is the best book I read this year. From far. I read it twice in a row and was never bored. Can't leave it. The story is beautifull, the way this is written too. I'll give it to my friends.

I was drawn to reading Keneally because of his authorship of "Schindler's List". As a result, I am grateful for becoming acquainted with Dan Sickles, which otherwise would never have happened. Sickles' life touched with and on many notable persons and events of the pre-civil war and civil war era. As a result, the reader is given the opportunity to see the period from a perspective which otherwise would not be afforded

Sickles definitely was a first class scoundrel and a third class person. His murder of Francis Scott Key's son is not the reason to classify Sickle's as a scoundrel. It's sad how one man could continually ruin other peoples lives and still come out smelling like a rose.

Keneally is an excellent writer. I often felt I was reading fiction, which made the book that much more enjoyable.

Keneally has offered us a roller coaster of a biography of one of the most controversial American figures of the 19th Century. Dan Sickles rose from Tammany Hall politics in New York through a London posting to Congress. While a representative his lovely, but often abandoned, wife Teresa became involved with the widower son of the composer of the Star Spangled Banner, America's national anthem. Ignoring this heritage, Sickles slew Barton Keys on a Washington Sunday in view of several witnesses. After a bizarre trial, in which the then novel plea of "temporary insanity" was invoked, Sickles left the courtroom free of guilt. Almost fortuitously, the onset of the War Between the States allowed Sickles to redeem whatever reputation he lost. As one of the Union's "political generals" Sickles proved to be a popular and capable leader. Gettysburg, that icon of American military history, proved his salvation or disgrace according to which account you follow. Did he risk another Union defeat by ignoring his superior's orders?

Keneally uses Teresa's lonely existence as the focal point of this biography. Although Sickles was hardly a paragon of virtue, Keneally is perplexed at his long-standing avoidance of Teresa. He muses over why Sickles kept separate habitation after the killing when Teresa clearly would have welcomed his return. Later, he mourns the lack of her presence at Sickles' various Army encampments when other generals had their wives visit, if for no other reason than troop morale. Meagher, a favourite of Keneally's, is held up in contrast. This Irish ex-convict's wife "Libby" graced the camp frequently. Libby, however, hadn't taken any lovers to arouse her husband's ire. Even after a thorough analysis of the mores of the times, Keneally can't forgive Dan Sickles failure to forgive.

This book is strangely structured. Keneally provides a long build-up to the murder, then dwells over the details of the trial. No particular is overlooked, from the courtroom temperature to the malodorous spectators. Forced to limit his description of one lawyer's two day long presentation to eight pages, Keneally manages to convey the role of oratory in the United States at mid-19th Century. Sickles' role as a general is well-presented, but is over-focussed. Sickles' ability to deal with Mary Lincoln is given more space than military engagements or the war environment. As a biography, there is some rationale for this, but the reader best consult some other works for a fuller picture. The post-war years, with Sickles postings to the Reconstruction South and his escapades in Europe slide past rapidly. His bizarre second marriage and later life could use some analysis, no matter how far-fetched, but Keneally simply rambles through the known information and leaves the reader to work out the motivations. At the end, he frankly states the book was written in honour of Teresa's memory. An unusual approach, but one likely to find favour with today's audience.

This book tells the story of the Congressman and Civil War General Dan Sickles, who was acquitted in the 1850's of murdering his wife's lover. ...(the son of the man who wrote the Star Spangled Banner), Sickles had many negative character traits which portray him in a less than positive light to modern Americans. That being sad, he was generally adored by many of his contemporaries, particularly by those who served under him in the Civil War. Highly readable, this book is difficult to put down once started. Some reviewers have given this book low rating, and perhaps that is because it does not read like a typical history book. Instead, the book almost reads like fiction and is highly enjoyable, instead of being the typical dates/places/events format of many history books. Highly recommended!