It is said that the winner writes the history, but it’s also true that the loser is free to use fiction to present the case for the defeated. John William Corrington, a noted Southern writer, published And Wait for the Night, his first novel, in 1964, near the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the American Civil War. As the novel begins, he describes the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi to show the agony of the defeat of the Army of the Confederate States by the overwhelming might of the Federal Army. But And Wait for the Night is not primarily about the war. It is about Reconstruction, the twelve-year occupation of the Confederate States that followed their defeat. Corrington’s dramatic example of this is the occupation of Shreveport, Louisiana, by the arrogant uniformed Yankee conquerors, both white and black, and their plundering civilian companions, the carpetbaggers. During the Civil War, one out of every five Southern families lost a husband, father or son. Under Reconstruction, the surviving Southerners found their Confederate money worthless, their land taken for unpaid taxes, and their civil government replaced by military fiat. And there was one further loss: the communal agreement that a Southerner should live his life with honor. Without any hope of redress by day, the survivors forgot their honor and responded by forming secret societies that waited for the night to take vengeance against their oppressors. Major Edward Malcolm Sentell, a paroled CSA officer, tires to maintain his honor but finds himself despised by his fellow Southerners and helpless to stop the looming conflict between them and the occupying Federal forces.
Genre: Thriller
Genre: Thriller
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