THE
GUNNS OF MONTAGUE
By
Robert A. Hervey
Book
I The Gunns of Montague
Book
II The Odyssey
Book
III The Civil War Years
Chapter
Books for Middle Readers, Ages 8 to 12
This is the history of a family that
settled the New England frontier, Jonathan Carver, one of the defenders of the
Colonies from the French and Indians, and the one who wrote the most famous
account of the massacre at Fort William Henry in 1757; the Gunns, Moses, his
father, uncles and cousins who fought in the Revolutionary War; and the four
brothers who were caught up in the Civil War. All the characters are real
people describing the events from a historically accurate perspective, in their
individual voices from their point of view. It is humorous, frightening,
poignant and sad. And, for what it’s worth, it is almost all true. Except for
the dialogue, of course.
The main characters are four
brothers, Milton, Julian, Austin and Virgil, raised in Brandon Vermont in the
1830’s. Abandoned by their father at an early age, fate delivers them to an
education by the Shakers, a Quaker sect, which has a positive effect on at
least two of them, Julian, who becomes the voice of conscience for the others,
and Virgil, who is conscripted into Hood’s Texas Brigade at the outbreak of the
Civil War. Milton is a mischievous sort and Austin has an IQ that is inversely
proportional to a high threshold of pain.
The
boys set out in search of their fortunes. Milton becomes talented with cards
and every other way to make a quick dollar. He wins a near bankrupt ragtag
circus on a Mississippi riverboat, and the boys make a living with it, touring
the antebellum South. Virgil goes on ahead, tacking up posters in the smaller
towns, avoiding those where people might have seen a real circus. He meets
another boy in Hannibal, Missouri, who was “born on the comet”, too, Sam
Clemens. They become life long friends.
Virgil’s
pacifism has a gentle, yet powerful influence on those around him despite the
incredible violence they encounter in the first year of the war. Recovering in
Chimborazo hospital, a rainbow after a storm seems to stretch from one end of
the Confederacy to the other. Virgil, constantly questioning the sanity of it
all, asks, “Who could fight a war beneath a rainbow?” He is taken prisoner by the Union Army just before Antietam,
swears allegiance to the North and serves three years at Fortress Monroe,
Virginia, where a storekeeper, Sam Arnold, later imprisoned for complicity in
Lincoln’s assassination, befriends him.
Witnessing Virgil’s conscription and
the confiscation of the circus animals from a safe distance, Milton and Julian
abandon the circus and escape to Philadelphia, after an episode of chicanery
with a crippled horse and a big race in New Orleans. Milton has grown into a
drinker, successful gambler and ladies’ man, Julian a gifted actor. Austin has
been murdered in Texas after a barroom brawl and a shoot-out. Julian meets and
impresses Edwin Booth, and becomes part of his company. They wind up in
Washington City, living in the rooming house of Mary Surratt, whom Milton woos,
meet John Wilkes Booth, a look alike of Julian, although known only as “Jack”
until the assassination, and all the other conspirators and personalities of
that dark event. After Virgil’s unsuccessful attempt to save Lincoln, the brothers
find themselves suspects in the plot because of their relationship with the
participants. The book ends with Milton and Julian’s escape from Washington,
and Virgil’s transfer to the Dakota Territory to fight Indians with a young
officer named George Armstrong Custer.
Book I 25
Chapters, 20,000 words
Book II Approx. 25 Chapters, 20,000 words
Book III Approx. 30 Chapters, 25,000 words