THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS

A gravely wounded Union soldier heals with the ministrations of a Southern woman.

It’s 1864 in Virginia, and Union Captain Jonathan Weybridge loses his right leg and several fingers on the battlefield at Gilbert’s Ford. A fellow soldier stanches the bleeding by applying a tourniquet, but otherwise leaves him to die. Then, a formerly enslaved woman named Sally discovers him and brings him to the home of 24-year-old Libby Steadman. She is a white woman whose husband, Peter, had freed the people enslaved at the gristmill he inherited and is now in a Yankee prison, if he’s even still alive. Sally and her husband, Joseph, now work at the gristmill, but the other freed slaves have long since skedaddled. Libby has a 12-year-old niece, Jubilee, who refers to Weybridge as a jackal, a not uncommon insult hurled at Union soldiers. Weybridge’s health slowly returns while he frets about his wife in Vermont. Libby and her family come to recognize his human decency, that he’s more than simply a jackal or a “bluebelly.” Meanwhile, rumors circulate that Libby is harboring a wounded Yankee, and she and her family go to great lengths to hide him. She and the captain will quickly hang if discovered. She secretly enlists the help of a local doctor and part-time drunk whom she isn’t convinced she can trust, but she has no choice. Will Libby and the captain ever hear from their beloved spouses again? She refers to him as “someone…I kept alive at a price I could not afford.” Bohjalian’s inspiration for the novel comes from documented historical events—a Virginia woman really did save a Union soldier who’d hailed from Vermont—and the set-up has led to a masterful yarn. No one knows how close to each other the real people became, and there’s no evidence that the real Libby ever shot two Confederate soldiers dead with a Colt pistol or that a freedman (Joseph, in the story) killed a man who’d tried to rape her. Those and other details are a credit to the author’s imagination. If there is a nit to pick, it’s with a title that might misdirect readers’ expectations. It’s not wrong, but don’t expect anything steamy or licentious.

A compelling story about two people who long for their spouses in a time of war.