Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

by Donald McCaig

  —Donald McCaig, 18 March 1997

  AFTERWORD

  So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the south. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war and suffered all I have suffered to have this object attained.

  —Robert E. Lee,

  Baltimore, Maryland, April 28, 1869

  More praise for

  JACOB’S LADDER

  “A tale of courage, cowardice, death, life, growth, war, violence, redemption, and finally, love and compassion. . . . McCaig, a poet-novelist, has the gentle face of a nineteenth-century man. That he could write such a gentle, compelling story about such an ungentle time rings true.”

  —Washington Post

  “McCaig’s prose is gorgeous. . . . [McCaig] renders his battle scenes with stunning force. They stand among the best in either fiction or nonfiction. . . . One of the best Civil War novels . . . stunning.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Jacob’s Ladder is a fine literary effort, broad in scale and scope, deep in metaphor and meaning, engrossing from beginning to end.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Jacob’s Ladder is a better novel than Cold Mountain. It makes Gone With the Wind look like the soap opera it really is in the last analysis. . . . McCaig has produced a masterpiece which deserves a wide readership.”

  —Virginia Quarterly

  “Jacob’s Ladder is a page-turning account of the men and women, masters and slaves, of a Virginia plantation caught in the maelstrom of the nation’s bloodiest, most tragic conflict. . . . McCaig has written a stirring human drama in this sweeping epic of war, heroism and love . . . a formidable literary success.”

  —Chattanooga Times

  “Imagine a fine collaboration between Shelby Foote and Margaret Mitchell and you get some idea of . . . this fine literary novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A fine novel.”

  —The Atlantic

  “McCaig has gotten hip-deep into America’s bloodiest war and he takes us with him . . . a worthwhile, entertaining book.”

  —Raleigh News and Observer

  “From the beginning, McCaig’s splendid novel, in lean and beautiful prose, grows out of the tangled thicket of memory and history, out of the fragrant orchard of poetry and imagination.”

  —Newport News Daily Press

  “[Jacob’s Ladder] is a big book, full of big battles and big events . . . it provides insight into a conflict that almost destroyed a young country, and continues to haunt us today.”

  —Lexington Herald Leader

  “McCaig brings the reader into the adrenaline-charged mind of a young Rebel lieutenant with enough intensity to generate hyperventilation . . . a triumph.”

  —The Enterprise, Patrick County, Virginia

  “This novel has moved me more than any other I have read for you in the past few years. I would say that this is the best Civil War novel I have ever read, and that includes Gone With the Wind.”

  —Clifton Fadiman, editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club

  “Jacob’s Ladder is an exciting historical novel of that same superior order as Thomas Flanagan’s Year of the French. McCaig has a fluent command of both the great events and the life-giving particulars of his full cast of Virginians.”

  —John Casey

  “This novel blots out the protection of historic distance. It is astonishingly immediate. Its research is magnificent, but never intrudes. It becomes the story of war itself, how brutal it is, how courageous, how slowly and inexorably mad.”

  —Mary Lee Settle

  “Boldly capacious, blessed with vivid and memorable characters and a wealth of striking and credible events, Donald McCaig’s powerful, compassionate story is deeply rooted in the real and living presence of Virginia, before, during, and after the Civil War. Jacob’s Ladder is historical fiction at its finest, and it places Donald McCaig in the pantheon of the best and brightest American novelists.”

  —George Garrett

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1998 by Donald McCaig

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  First published as a Norton paperback 2009

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact

  W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830

  Manufacturing by Courier Westford

  Book design by JAM Design

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCaig, Donald.

  Jacob’s ladder: a story of Virginia during the war/by Donald McCaig.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-393-04629-X

  1. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 2. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Afro-Americans—Fiction. 3. Afro-Americans—Virginia—Fiction. 4. Gatewood family—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.A255J33 1998

  813’.54—dc21 9731165

  CIP

  ISBN 978-0-393-33710-5 pbk.

  ISBN 978-0-393-34757-9 (e-book)

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

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