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Max Byrd, the renowned author of Jackson and Jefferson, brings history to life in this stunning novel set in America’s Gilded Age. Grant is an unforgettable portrait of a colorful era—and the flawed, iron-willed, mysterious giant at its center.
Ulysses S. Grant pursued a tragic war to its very end. But his final battle starts in 1880, when he loses his race to become the first U.S. President to serve three terms, goes bankrupt, and begins a fight against cancer that will prove to be his greatest challenge. Through journalist Nicholas Trist, readers follow Grant’s journey—and along the way meet Grant’s sworn enemy Henry Adams and Adams’s doomed wife, Clover, the old soldiers Sherman and Sheridan, and the always clever, always scheming Mark Twain. Revealed here are not only the penetrating secrets of our eighteenth president, but the intimate power-brokering that led to the end of Grant’s career, setting the stage for a new era in American history—one defined by politics, not warfare.
“Serious, intricate . . . gripping . . . Byrd is an expert at linking the products of his own imagination with historical facts.”—The New York Times Book Review
“With the license and gifts of a first-rate novelist, Max Byrd has managed in Grant to reveal the man far better than those who have tried before.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A vibrant, stunning story of Grant’s last years, but best of all, a gripping tale of ‘the reborn nation on the other side of the war.’ ”—Civil War Book Review
“Splendid . . . nothing less than a visit with greatness.”—Associated Press
“Historical fiction doesn’t get any better than this.”—Booklist
- Sales Rank: #1358691 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-02-12
- Released on: 2013-02-12
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Devotees of the historical novel will find much to admire in Max Byrd's tightly written and consistently entertaining glance backward at General U.S. Grant's failed attempt to win a third presidential term. In life, Grant was an inscrutable character. He spoke little, wrote little, remained faithful to his wife, and seems to have devoted all the extravagance in his nature to alcohol. He had been an indifferent student at West Point and a conscientious but undistinguished young officer. The years just before the Civil War were the lowest for him--all his business enterprises had soured. Grant had the opposite of the Midas touch: everything he put his hands on turned to mud, and his chronic drunkenness had led to his forced retirement from the army.
In short, in 1860 no one would have predicted that Ulysses S. Grant would become "the most famous man in the world," as one of the many incidental characters in Grant describes him. Shyness and a gift for profound silences began to work to his benefit later, during his political career. In a rare glimpse into his subject's inner world, Byrd follows the general's meandering train of thought as his advisors plot his third presidential campaign. Outwardly, he was sure, nobody could have told that his mind was elsewhere, lazily turning over thoughts, memories, making similes. His mental process, he believed, resembled an old Missouri farmer digging at a stump, slowly prying it up from the dirt, excavating his idea.... He knew he seemed silent, impassive; he knew other people mistook that for strength. It is a mark of the General's elusiveness that Byrd chooses not Grant himself but two reporters as his main characters. Sylvanus Cadwallader is a seasoned and cynical Chicago news hound. Much of what we learn comes from his no-holds-barred biography of the great commander, marked "not for publication" on the cover. His fellow journalist, a younger man named Nicholas Trist, was injured at Cold Harbor during the war, losing an arm to Grant's insistence on pushing through the rebel lines at any cost. Trist takes the opportunity of Grant's renewed presidential ambitions to return to Washington from Paris as a foreign correspondent. Within a few hours of his arrival in the capital, he falls in love with Elizabeth Cameron, the wife of a senator. Days later, he is granted an interview with Mark Twain. Soon he is acquainted with Clover and Henry Adams, and receiving the cherished confidences (for print, of course) of the general's closest advisors.
Trist's story is as interesting as Grant's, though on a smaller scale. The most vivid touches in this novel, however, are Byrd's incidental depictions of our continuity and discontinuity with the past. Although Nicholas Trist can read a sign advertising "Ivory Soap--99 and 44/100ths percent pure," he can also glance up at the wall of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Station in Washington and see seven clocks to which travelers adjust their watches, since each railroad company operated on its own time. Byrd's sense of fun pervades the novel and recalls his distinguished antecedent, Gore Vidal. He may not offer Vidal's magisterial sweep, nor his corrosive wit, but Byrd shows a similar infectious pleasure in bringing history to life. --Regina Marler
From Publishers Weekly
The third installment in Byrd's series of political/historical novels (Jefferson; Jackson) is informative and entertaining historical fiction. Although it's touted as similar to Gore Vidal's sensational American chronicle series, Byrd's literary mentor is more like Henry James, as the book features dense prose, a mannerly plot and psychologically real characterizations. A fictional character, journalist and author Nicholas Trist, is the center of this loosely constructed churn through the politics and society of the 1880s. Trist is a one-armed and embittered veteran of Cold Harbor who has spent his years since the Civil War in self-imposed exile. Sent home to America by a French magazine to cover Ulysses S. Grant's bid for an unprecedented third term in 1879, Trist is initially bulldozed by Sen. Don Cameron, Grant's campaign manager, who vows to give the reporter access to Grant only if he'll write laudatory accounts. Elizabeth, Cameron's young and lovely wife, instantly attracts Trist's interest, and the first half of the novel is paced by their parries as the pair seek the courage to consummate their passion. A storm of Washington politics swirls in the background, and the cast of characters is fleshed out by credible portraits of Samuel Clemens, Sylvanus Cadwaller, William T. Sherman, Clover Adams and, of course, Grant himself. In the second half of the book, the action jumps ahead to the next election year and traces Grant's decline into bankruptcy and fatal disease as he frantically tries to complete his memoirs in order to save his family from penury. Trist and Elizabeth get together, but here Byrd makes a tactical mistake (the same one Vidal commits in Empire), by trying to shift the focus to Henry AdamsAwho, as a character, remains a caricature of a conceited and often cruel cynic. Byrd's research and literary knowledge are impressive, but while his re-creation of period detail, including product placement (Ivory Soap, E.C. Booze whiskey and Heinz Pickles), is excellent, there are a few anachronisms. Even so, this is a fascinating read for any serious student of period when modern politics and society were being mapped out of the smoky shadows of a devastating war. Agent, Virginia Barber. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ulysses S. Grant, an undistinguished president who owed his office to a nation grateful for the long-awaited victory in the Civil War, is a historical novelist's dream subject. Living during a tumultuous time and marked by both honor and humiliation, he projected an ambiguous persona. Ehrlich takes this paradoxical man for a wild ride through history. Casting Grant as the evil twin of the real Ulysses S. Grant, an upright neighbor whose identity he stole, Ehrlich hits all the factual highlights, and his inventions have a satirical, gut-busting effect. Like his earlier Big Government (LJ 9/15/98), the new novel humorously dissects the nature of political power and its odd coincidences. In contrast, Byrd's book, though slower to excite the reader, is a serious exploration of the life and times of Grant. Its strong suit is the description of key battles and postwar events through the eyes of a one-armed veteran of the war. For Byrd, the period is a vast canvas on which he limns not only the central figure of Grant but also the lives affected by his habitual fecklessness, wartime hardness, and peacetime obtuseness. Of the two books, Ehrlich's book is a winner for larger fiction collections, while military fiction collections will be enhanced by the Byrd title. [Grant is also portrayed in Richard Parry's That Fateful Lightning: A Novel of Ulysses S. Grant (LJ 5/1/00). DEd.]DBarbara Conaty, Library of Congres.
-DBarbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A Fine Book with a Strange Twist
By Robert Rosen
A surprising and fascinating book. Author Max Byrd follows the same basic structure as in his previous historical novels Jefferson and Jackson: youngish writer with one foot in Europe and the other in America tries to penetrate the essential mystery of the title character by researching the collected and conflicting observations of well-placed contemporaries. In Grant's case of course, the essential mystery is how Sam Grant, an alcoholic and utter failure approaching 40 years of age, could become U. S. Grant, the man who took command of the oft-beaten Union Army and saved his country, becoming in the process a future two-term president and "the most famous man in the world". Our protagonist, the fictional writer Nicholas Trist, was maimed in the war under Grant's command and thus has every reason to hate his former commander. As he works through his feelings about Grant and more details of various parts of Grant's life are revealed, we draw our own conclusions as well. The events of the novel take place after Grant's military and presidential careers are concluded and concern his attempt to obtain a third term and the well-known (and here well-told) efforts of the bankrupt and dying Grant to complete his memoirs in order to provide for his family. As expected in a book of this nature various real-life personages appear throughout (e.g. Mark Twain, William Tecumseh Sherman). Unexpectedly, one of these characters emerges as the subject of the novel just as much as Grant is. In real-life, famed 19th-century historian Henry Adams expressed his contemptuous dismissal of Grant's abilities and so Adams' prominent role in the book is no surprise, especially given his irresistibly (for a writer) vexatious personality . Where the novel takes its strange turn is the role Adams' wife Marion Hooper Adams (or his"doomed wife Clover" as the jacket blurb would have it) plays. Though hating her husband, Trist becomes friends with the witty, talented, unattractive, and unappreciated Clover and it is their conversations which become the most moving part of the book. I believe the author came to find Mrs. Adams' sad story even more interesting than Grant's and so powerful is Byrd's writing in these passages that I did as well. The book gains strength as we watch and she watches her own life slowly unravel. The most unusual thing of all is that her story and Grant's story are for the most part unconnected and the Trist character in effect shuttles back and forth between Grant's and Clover's lives. Since the novel is called Grant I was very curious to see how Byrd would in the end link the two stories. He does so masterfully but almost imperceptibly, in one seemingly off-hand comment Clover makes near the end of the book, contrasting Grant's actions in his final days to an act of her husband who was motivated by something quite different. I most strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone who enjoyed Byrd's previous books. I hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a historical novel in a military vein such as Michael and Jeffrey Shaara's Civil War novels. The book contains no battle reconstructions and Grant's strategic and tactical decisions are only discussed cursorily in the larger context of his character. Anyone who likes Gore Vidal's historical novels should like this book and I suspect Byrd is very familiar with those novels as well.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Novel Centered on the Last Five Years of Grant's Life
By H. Lee Dixon
A historical fiction about Grant beginning in the fall of 1879 and ending with his death in 1885. It begins when the Country and specifically the Republican party is looking for a Presidential candidate. Grant is not actively campaigned for the nomination which, if elected, would make him President for a third term. The author, Max Byrd, uses an interesting technique of describing Grant's persona by telling stories, some well known and some not, about people who touched his life. Some of the people are friends and some frankly, are enemies. Byrd uses a fictitious newspaper reporter as the forcing function to tie the many stories together into an enjoyable and informative novel. Somewhat distracting for me was his technique of hyphenation--that carry substantial and granted informative amplification but in some cases goes on for several lines--to make his point. I enjoyed very much the detailed pictures that Byrd paints of the life and times of Washington D.C. The Republican convention was held in Chicago in 1880. Byrd does a nice job of describing the activities of that gathering where Grant had over 300 votes, but insufficient for nomination. Garfield was continuing to advocate John Sherman and then on the thirty-sixth vote the convention rolled-over and nominated Garfield himself. While the words, or course, are Byrd's creation, most of the characters are real. I found it interesting to take the book and walk around the area near Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and see the houses where Grant and the other characters came and went. Many interesting facts...for example, I was surprised to learn that Mark Twain convinced Grant to let the publisher that he owned publish the Memoirs of Grant. Twain paid him in advance because Grant's investment partner, Ward, had embezzled all their money. Byrd also has written similar fictionalized novels about Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. I plan to read both of those as well.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Rembrandt with a pen
By desefinado
This book is a terrific evocation of an era, largely ignored in American history. By painting the shadows around Grant, I thought Byrd gave us "The Gilded Age" replete with the co-author (Twain) himself. Byrd has a rare gift for historical portraiture and wonderful storytelling. For those looking for more biographical facts on Grants life, see Jean Smith's excellent one volume biography.
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