Sweet Glory

It's taken me way too much time to get my hands on and read Sweet Glory (#302), Lisa Potocar's Young Adult Civil War novel about a girl who enlists in a New York cavalry unit disguised as a boy.  Ms. Potocar's aim is to bring history alive for young readers, and she succeeds powerfully by basing her book on a little known facet of Civil War history: the female soldier.

Why does suddenly matter to her parents that Jana Brady should be wearing dresses and meeting young men at proper gatherings?  Quilting bees and ice cream socials are not for Jana.  She's been her father's hunting companion and lookout for his Underground Railroad activities since she was young and wearing boy's clothing was simply practical.  Jana yearns for an active role in defending the Union and freeing the slaves she sees being passed along through Elmira, New York.  A chance encounter with an female acquaintance who has already run away and joined the 10th New York is her key to stepping through that door to her own freedom.  She cuts her hair and becomes Johnnie Brodie.  Through Jana/Johnnie's eyes we witness both the excitement and the reality of war as it grinds on and on.

This book was a very fast read; with well written battle scenes and Jana and her companions' brushes with death, I could hardly put it down.  Many of the scenes pack a real emotional punch, and I have to admit to sniffling into a Kleenex in a few spots.  But what makes this book even more exciting was how accurately Ms. Potocar has translated the fascinating material from the non-fiction work about women soldiers in the Civil War, They Fought Like Demons (See my post of 12/3/12.) into a humanizing and believable fictitious narrative. 

It's an especially relevant read for young people, considering the current attitudes in the military about female soldiers.  Most soldiers then were tolerant, and even protective of those women who lived among them as comrades and did their duty just as they did.  If only that same acceptance pervaded the American military ranks today!  Professional rivalries in medicine were clearly an entirely different matter!

Okay, I do have one quibble about this book.  When Jana meets her "true love" (Come on, you know she's going to; it's a YA novel!) she suddenly yearns to throw off her men's clothing,  and experience  "life as a woman".  That's the antithesis of her attitude before she runs away to join the army.  She's riding around on her cavalry mare mooning about having a parcel of children.  That was unrealistic and would have been highly dangerous in the field.  Did Jana suddenly give up thinking and living her life on her own terms, and suddenly fall into the female stereotype of the day?  Didn't like that at all, and didn't buy it for this character!

If you have Young Adult readers in your life, buy them a copy of this book;  it's a a great and painless way to learn more about the Civil War.  And I even loved the cover art!  It's an almost perfect package.