Gettysburg

LONG REMEMBER--MacKinlay Kantor--Coward-McCann ($2.50).

Because its crowd of corpses marked the highest tide of the Confederate invasion of the North, because it is still the best-preserved battlefield in the U. S., and finally because Abraham Lincoln made a speech there, Gettysburg remains a famed landmark in U. S. history. The story of that three-day battle between Lee's veterans and Meade's Army of the Potomac has been told many & many a time since 1863 without growing older in the telling. Author Kantor's version, an attempt to describe the battle as it might have appeared to a noncombatant native of the town, has almost the freshness of an eyewitness account.

Daniel Bale came back to Gettysburg from the West to bury his grandfather. No Copperhead but an inconsistent pacifist, Bale had done his share of Indian fighting but refused to have anything to do with the Civil War. He settled down in his grandfather's house, prepared to have a quiet time for a while, in spite of his neighbor's nudges. Two events shattered his peace. First, a friend's wife fell in love with him, practically asking him to seduce her. And on July 1, 1863, Lee's advance guard met Buford's cavalry, a mile or so west of Bale's home town. In the first day's fighting Bale lent a hand with the wounded on Seminary Ridge. Next day, with the Union troops driven back, his house was inside the Confederate lines. His mistress chose that day to have qualms of conscience: she was sure her husband (a Northern officer) would be killed in next day's battle, and implored Bale to find him and allay his suspicions of her fidelity.

Bale had his job cut out for him. He disguised himself in blue trousers taken from a Federal corpse, joined a Confederate night attack on Culp's Hill. At dawn good luck helped him inside the Federal position. Next day Pacifist Bale saw more bloodshed than most soldiers ever see, but he still had enough humor to laugh at the sign in Ever Green Cemetery: "All persons found using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost vigor of the law." He finally discovered his man's corps in the centre of the line, and was just being sent to the rear as a civilian when a Confederate bombardment blocked the way. When Pickett's charge came whooping over the wheatfields and up to the stone wall on Cemetery Hill Bale forgot he was a pacifist. Though history is silent on the point, Author Kantor gives his hero the credit of killing General Armistead. Bale found his man, not dead but badly wounded. The three days' fateful thunders had been too much for his mistress's conscience and she was glad to expiate her sin by nursing her crippled husband. Bale took a oneway ticket back to the West.

Author Kantor's single -eyewitness method shows to best advantage in the earlier phases of the battle, when the action is comparatively simple and concentrated. Some of his vivid pictures of tired, dirty, wounded men, of galloping batteries and matter-of-fact sharpshooters are unforgettable. Later, when he has to describe a two-mile battle line through the eyes of one spectator, he falls back on impressionistic violence that results in confusion. By & large Long Remember is a brilliantly exciting piece of historical fiction, a book that many a reader will remember long.

Originally the April choice of the Literary Guild, Long Remember was superseded by The New Dealers (TIME, April 2), is now announced as the selection for May.

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