Taylor (Bluegrass
; Earth Bones
), a former Kentucky poet laureate, mines the state's history and legends for an intriguing if uneven account of one of the Civil War's most enigmatic figures. Taylor's protagonist, Marcellus Jerome Clarke, an orphan and a sensitive adolescent, joins the Confederate army at 15 along with John Patterson, whom he "idolized" as a "second father." When an unarmed Patterson is shot in the face, Clarke vows revenge and fights as one of Morgan's raiders and, later, as a guerrilla. With Clarke's vaguely feminine appearance—smooth face, shoulder-length hair and slender build—it isn't long before he's misidentified as Sue Mundy, a "she-devil in pantaloons," in a local newspaper's account of the guerrillas' raids. Instantly famous, Clarke is hunted and eventually captured, court-martialed and hanged in March 1865. Taylor is more successful in portraying battle scenes and the tension that ran thick in the bitterly divided state than in navigating Clarke's psyche, which remains thin. But fans of the Civil War and historical military fiction will appreciate the author's depiction of war in a border state. (Nov.)
