Brotherhood by A.B. Westrick
Genre: Historical Fiction > USA Civil War
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

DESCRIPTION: The year is 1867, the South has been defeated, and the American Civil War is over. But the conflict goes on. Yankees now patrol the streets of Richmond, Virginia, and its citizens, both black and white, are struggling to redefine their roles and relationships. By day, fourteen-year-old Shadrach apprentices with a tailor and sneaks off for reading lessons with Rachel, a freed slave, at her school for African-American children. By night he follows his older brother to the meetings of a group whose stated mission is to protect Confederate widows like their mother. But as the true murderous intentions of the brotherhood—now known as the Ku Klux Klan—are revealed, Shad finds himself trapped between old loyalties and what he knows is right.

A powerful and unflinching story of a family caught in the enormous social and political upheaval of the period of Reconstruction.

REVIEW: A compelling story, on a perspective of the USA Civil War that needs to be told more often.

In general, I agree with most reviewers' comments who gave it a high rating, and for the first half of the book, I thought it to be a four-star effort.

However, one critical feature of Shadrach's thought process didn't ring true and it happened to be one that the author took care to utilize time and time again.

Once someone realizes or learns something they hadn't known before, vacillation between their new view of reality and their old one very quickly, if not immediately, dissipates. That is, one cannot un-know something just because one would like to go back to ignorance. One cannot return to the way things were before the rose-coloured glasses were removed - not without deliberate effort to deny the facts.

As revealed in the first half of The Brotherhood, Shadrach was initially attracted to and supported the Brotherhood (KKK) because it helped him 'feel like a man' and gave him, for the first time, a sense of belonging. Fine. Makes sense given his family life, including a brutal older brother, acute poverty, and the burning resentments of 1867 Richmond.

But then, Shadrach witnesses the KKK's brutal, sinister side - including a murder - and was horrified by it. Despite that, the author has Shadrach vacillating too many times to count between supporting and rejecting the Brotherhood.

Shadrach's vacillating was the focal point of the latter half of the book. It felt like the author was just trying to fill pages and it became so tiresome, so stretching credibility, that I was tempted to put the book aside. In the end, I think the author did a disservice to his character. He had drawn Shadrach as being nothing like the brother, but instead being bright, thoughtful, even kind. A character such as that wouldn't take half a book to get it right.

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