In 1831, the Turner rebellion shook America's cotton kingdom to its core. Nat Turner, a slave who had become a preacher, felt he had been chosen by God to lead an insurrection. A solar eclipse provided a sign that his time was now. Turner led approximately two hundred slaves in the massacre of sixty Virginia whites. Once his uprising had been broken up by a white militia, Turner hid in a Virginia swamp for more than two months before his capture. The leader was eventually tried and executed with sixteen of his coconspirators but the South would never be the same. Turner's rebellion unintentionally caused the bonds that imprisoned slaves tightened. Teaching slaves to read, black preachers and unsupervised assemblies were outlawed, while instances of cruelty escalated. Planters saw the bloodthirsty fire ignited in its caged workforce became frightened and paranoid.

Daniel Pagner attempts to bring this historic event to life in Ol' Prophet Nat. His narrator, a collector of old books, comes across a family Bible in which Turner, while hidden in the Virginia swamps, wrote his story. The premise is slightly hokey but Ol' Prophet Nat still effectively recreates Nat Turner and his uprising. The flimsy, grimy old cabins; the hot days and long hours; the bleeding black flesh and a community's collective fear and anger are all described in stunning detail. Turner himself becomes quite the literary character. He considers himself a Moses and the African Americans, the Israelites and the gut wrenching decisions he must make to do what is right, despite its futility and detrimental outcome, is truly affecting to readers. This fine account of the Turner rebellion animates the dusty pages of history into vibrant life.

The problem with this book is that it stretchs the reader's suspension of disbelief beyond the point where it's an enjoyable read. It's the story of two young Alabamian recruits in the Army of Northern Virginia, but it seems to really have been intended as a morality tale. It's all about race -- the lynching of black prisoners, the unsupported and unbelievable rejection by the main characters of racist beliefs -- and violence -- sentimental scenes with wounded Yankees and a portrait of a ridiculously corrupt army. Now, there's nothing wrong with an author wanting to make a moral point, but reality shouldn't be ignored. I don't find the characters' mentalities, the over-the-top portrayal of army politics, or the depiction of the Battle of Fredericksburg to be consistent with my own research. Davy, Josh and Luke seem to only exist as innocent, ignorant young blank slates for the points the author wishes to make. Davy in particular is far too saintly. In addition, the dialogue is terrible, with clumsy, phonetically rendered accents. Having said all that, the writing is occasionally good and it's not utterly unreadable, but overall, I don't think this is worth reading.

This book reads nothing like a manuscript written in 1842. Every word in the book, every speck of syntax, is accessible to modern-day readers. Every person mentioned is well-known to Dickensians. Indeed, there is not one footnote, not one gloss, not one annotation, in this entire volume, and none is needed, for every word is comfortable and familiar. But scholars who have read genuine material of this type know that it is well-peppered wih archaic word usages, long-forgotten cultural references, and people who have passed on without leaving a ripple. By contrast, the brilliant Pilgrim _Letters of Charles Dickens_ are roughly on the order of one-half annotations. The alleged diary also contains at least one striking anachronism; on page 131 we read "gotcha", but the earliest dating for this word in the OED is 1932, some 90 years later. Further problems could be mentioned but this little volume hardly seems worth the ammunition. This would be a pleasant minor historical fiction, but it is represented as being just-plain-historical, and cannot be. Give this a miss.