Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground

Svenson, Peter

ISBN 10: 0571197981 / ISBN 13: 9780571197989

Published by Faber & Faber, 1992

Seller Inventory # BSM.165U5

Synopsis:

On the morning of June 8, 1862, two armies met on a rain-wet field in Cross Keys, Virginia. When the Battle of Cross Keys was over, the Confederate army had halted the Union advance, an important victory in Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign. The armies moved on, leaving behind their dead and wounded, and a field strewn with the detritus of war.
One hundred twenty-five years later, artist Peter Svenson purchased forty acres of farmland encompassing the battlefield with the intention of starting over in rural privacy. He built a house, refurbished the old barn on the property, and taught himself to farm hay. At the same time, he immersed himself in the history of the land and the Battle of Cross Keys.
In Battlefield Svenson intertwines a detailed description of the battle based on field reports, letters, and other firsthand accounts with a lively recounting of his own present day war against progress in the form of pesticides and mini-malls. We watch as Svenson harvests his first crop of hay the old-fashioned way, and tries to live with respect for and responsibility to the area's past.
At the same time, we see the battle unfold as if superimposed on the landscape. The Union army confronts the Confederate army. Both commanders are ill-informed and indecisive. A hero emerges in the unlikely form of a sixty-eight-year-old Confederate general whose confidence contributes significantly to the stunning defeat of the much larger Union force.
Here Svenson combines history with a personal and passionate reminder of how intimately connected we are to the land we occupy and to its history.

Review: "This compelling memoir is by turns charming and chilling. As the artist-author restores a forty-acre farm field and builds a house in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, making the mistakes of a city slicker but somehow bumbling through to success, he also uncovers the story of the Battle of Cross Keys that was fought on his land 125 years earlier. Alternating chapters focus contrapuntally on the 1980s and 1860s, keeping the reader glued to these fascinating pages."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

"You don't have to be an amateur farmer or a Civil War buff to admire what Peter Svenson achieves in Battlefield. . . . The reader watches with increasing fascination as the Union and Confederate ghosts of a small but deadly skirmish on June 8, 1862 come alive again between the rows of the author's golden harvest. It's quite a literary accomplishment."--Herbert Mitgang "The New York Times "

Bibliographic Details

Title: Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication Date: 1992
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: very_good