Devil's Dream

September 7, 2009
After tackling the Haitian slave rebellion in a three-book series, Bell uses a smaller stage to create a captivating portrait of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. The novel plays effortlessly with time and structure, shuttling between 1845 and 1865 as Forrest marries Mary Ann Montgomery, becomes a guilt-stricken slave trader and, during the Civil War, is targeted for destruction by General Sherman. Despite his aggressive actions on the battlefield, Forrest struggles with the demands of a complicated family: tensions between Mary Ann and Forrest's black mistress take a personal toll, while the rivalry between his sons Willy and Matthew (the illegitimate child of a long-ago affair with a slave) creates distraction. Meanwhile, his addiction to gambling and his attraction to his mistress send Forrest into a contemplation of the forces that control him. Many of the war sequences are delivered via Henri, a Haitian wanderer who joins Forrest's troops and possesses the ability to communicate with the ghosts of those killed in battle. The unconventional structure and supernatural twist expand the narrative into an engaging examination of what it means to be free, a question that haunts Forrest through his life.

October 1, 2009
Bell follows up his Haitian trilogy (The Stone that the Builder Refused, 2004, etc.) with a novel of the Confederacy.

Born in poverty, Nathan Bedford Forrest created his own fortune, earned a reputation for inborn military genius and rose to national fame. A self-made man from a hardscrabble background, Forrest was a particularly American figure, and monuments bearing his stony image still dot the American landscape. But he was also a slave trader, a Confederate general and a founding leader of the Ku Klux Klan—at first glance a most unlikely subject for Bell, best known for chronicling a slave-led revolution in three critically praised novels. But it turns out the author is eminently suited for producing an informed, nuanced and not unsympathetic portrait of a man mostly remembered today as a patron saint of white supremacists. Bell puts Forrest in context, re-creating a society in which the enslavement of blacks by whites is traditional and uncontroversial, an unquestioned part of the natural order. Echoing his past work, the author creates a counterpoint to his protagonist in Henri, a Haitian who travels to the United States to stir a slave rebellion but ends up fighting alongside Forrest. Henri brings a Creole perspective and a distinctly African spirituality to the narrative. Bell imagines Forrest's interactions with Henri and the other black men who follow him, including one who is his son, as well as his relationships with household slaves and the black woman who becomes his longtime mistress. In doing so, he reveals the complexity and range of interracial interaction possible in the Old South. Some will argue that Forrest hardly deserves humanizing, and that argument has merit. But Bell has chosen to exercise one of the novelist's greatest gifts: He makes an alien world real and, in so doing, reminds us that slavery was not a spontaneous, supernatural evil, but the product of a particular cultural environment.

Brave, accomplished and utterly compelling, seamed with passages of haunting, lyrical beauty.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2009
Bell ("All Souls' Rising") brings us a novel about infamous Tennessee native and Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest's life on and off the battlefield, and before and after the war, is described as the novel's chronology moves back and forth through the years 184565. Forrest was no angel, as the book's title can attest; he was a slave trader with a weakness for gambling and a man who loved his wife and children but also had a slave family. He enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army and rose to its highest ranks despite a lack of formal military training, a fierce temper, and a real disdain for authority. Rich descriptions of battles, accounts of the lives of the men who fought alongside Forrest, and the pure force of Forrest's personality make this an engrossing read. VERDICT Highly recommended; great for fans of historical and Civil War fiction (e.g., by Michael and Jeff Shaara, Howard Bahr) but engaging and well written enough for broad appeal. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 7/09.]Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2009
Bells magnificent Haitian trilogy, focusing on the rebel leader Toussaint Louverture and concluding with The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004), established his bona fides as a superb historical novelist. In his most masterfully choreographed fact-based tale yet, Bell returns to his native ground, Tennessee, to tell the tale of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a feared Confederate general of profound contradictions, strategic brilliance, and outrageous valor. Bell conceives of Bedford as a sharp-tongued, virile, dangerously charismatic, and seemingly invincible slave trader who treats the people he owns with respect and compassion, and an equestrian who loves horses yet rides many to death in audacious cavalry maneuvers. Irascible rebel Bedford loves his white wife, black mistress, and all his children, legitimate and otherwise. Bell subtly contrasts Americas Civil War with Haitis slave revolt via his narrator Henri, a Haitian with the sight who gets drawn into Bedfords orbit. Exciting and authentic, Bells novel of a world in violent transition is flush with action and ravishing evocations of forests and fields, heat and rain, the muddy churn of hungry troops, and fleeting moments of respite as tragedy is leavened with sensuality and mystery. Will Bells Bedford, who so perfectly embodies the cruel paradoxes of race and war, ride again?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)