A Distant Flame

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Author ... wonderful book!
Review: I actually go to the University of Georgia where Phil Williams is faculty at and have attended many of his readings which are very interesting and entertaining. I am afraid that I am not as good at critiquing books as the following reveiws, however I just wanted to make sure everyone knew what a wonderful author Phil Williams truly is. The research that was put into this book, he told one group it took 10 years of research and writing for A Distant Flame. What a passionate writer!

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read in a long time
Review: This novel is absolutely the best book I've read in a long time. Mr. Williams' writing is wonderful. He puts you right there with Charlie Merrill. Once Charlie got to Kennesaw Mountain,I really had a hard time reading as the tears were flowing and continued on through to the end of the book. This will definitely leave a lasting impression on anyone that reads it. I just read it this past weekend and ready to read it again!

Rating:
Summary: High Caliber Book
Review: This work is fundamentally different from most historical novels of the Civil War. It is interesting in that it gives more than a singular temporal sequence of wartime events surrounding the main character's involvement in the Battle of Atlanta. This presents a varied chronological sequence (and commensurate changing perspective) as viewed through the long lens of fifty years.

Without revealing too much detail, this story is told from pre-war, late-war, and long post-war perspectives of a Confederate soldier. Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" most aptly delved into long-sought hopes and dreams postponed, a theme that defined the life of many Confederate soldiers throughout and during the closing days of the War. Without taking anything from Mr. Frazier's book, "A Distant Flame" travels one step further. This work allows the final chapter to be written as it relates to an old Confederate soldier's life. It focuses on his struggles to find meaning in not only the events that surrounded his participation in the War, but also, with regard to a lifetime of hopes and the weight of disappointments relating to family and friends lost, and of love unwillingly deferred. From the perspective of this reader, in the end it tells a tale of hope and redemption.

I highly recommend this work. It is a well written, high caliber book [appropriate to that most effective for a sharpshooter]. It is hoped that the author (Philip Lee Williams) will have much more in store for us fortunate readers in the future.


Rating:
Summary: 'Distant Flame' Burns Near
Review: Through the point of view of Charlie Merrill in all but one crucial spot, A Distant Flame pulls us right up to the fire and passion of the experience of the War Between the States for the ordinary Southern boy. It sears that experience onto a permanent sense of reflection seeking understanding which, we learn, is attainable this side of death. Deft time switching from the novel's "present," 1914, back to a sickly boy's consideration of early Civil War 1862 and to his actual participation in the Chicamauga to Atlanta events of 1864. All this in the context of a 50-year survivor's ultimate chore--understanding it. Loss of loved ones on multiple levels, all genuine and honest. Objectivity and distance as a survival strategy, represented by Charlie's sharpshooting. This is in some ways a novel of "Compensation" (with a clever nod to Mr. Emerson). Not a line of drudgery. Though not comic, written with appropriate humor. The horror does not titillate. Nor does the romance in this anti-romance reflective of the 50 years of post Civil War American literary realism. In the end, it is not about the South, however: Charlie could have been from Goshen, Indiana, or a town in Michigan, just as well.

This novel is its own screenplay. It has more to say and show than Cold Mountain and more about the soldier and the town in the war than Killer Angels even pretends to offer.

Buy it. Read it. It is a modern story well told.