John William Corrington (1932–1988)

Wow! I can see this book being made into a thriller of a movie.
New Orleans journalist Wes Colvin was supposed to meet someone that tipped him via telephone that he wanted to tell him about the "deduct box". It was a good thing that Wes was late to that meeting and what follows next is thrill and danger upon more death. Does everything relate to an assassination that happened 50 years ago? Most of the people are dead or being killed, so who does it matter that much to? Who is behind the recent tragedies? I literally could not put it down!… (mehr)

And Wait for the Night is a very absorbing book about the Reconstruction Era south, specifically Shreveport, LA. Whether Corrington picked Shreveport for its symbolic value (it was the last Southern city to surrender and so the final major location over which the flag of the Confederacy flew in earnest) or not I don't know, but it doesn't matter. This is a book clearly of the 1960s, in that it is a "Novel" with a capital "N," detailed and long, with lots of characters. After an opening, action-packed, section portraying the seige and surrender of Vicksburg, the next 30% or so of the book introduces these characters and provides their back-stories. Then we get on with the story of the Northern occupation of Shreveport and the forces at work that produce the tragedy that is Reconstruction and its lasting, frightful legacies, including the birth of the Klan.

This book is very well written, with some exquisite passages about nature, both human and otherwise, and lots of great dialogue, too. If some of the characters seem too much archetypes (the Northern colonel bent on revenge against the whole of Southern society, even to the point of purposefully provoking bloodshed, the Southern major who stands on his points of honor even past the point that his own people have had enough of him, the young man so twisted by his four years of killing that he has become little more than a walking vessel of hatred), we forgive this, because those archetypes are so skillfully drawn.

I suspect that this novel was shoveled under and forgotten because the writing is raw and conclusion decidedly untidy. In other words, perhaps a bit ahead of its time. But for anyone interested in the Civil War and especially Reconstruction, I heartily recommend trying to unearth a copy of this book somewhere and reading it with attention.… (mehr)