Andersonville by Edward M. Erdelac

Published by Random House/Hydra on August 18, 2015

The first quarter of Andersonville is extraordinary. After that, the novel drifts into the conventions of horror fiction. Although the novel as a whole does not live up to the promise of its beginning, it remains a well-told tale.

A black man named Barclay Lourdes sneaks onto a train and assumes the identity of a captured Union soldier. Confederate soldiers take Barclay and their other prisoners to Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. It is a brutal place. Edward M. Erdelac describes the stench, disease, starvation, and cruelty that pervade the prison camp in vivid language. It is a place more suited to lice, maggots, and vermin than the prisoners who inhabit it.

The premise of Erdelac’s novel is that Andersonville (an actual prison camp during the Civil War) was intentionally made into a place of depravity so that demons would have an earthly environment in which they could thrive. Barclay, a practitioner of hoodoo and voudon, has been asked to investigate the camp by Quitman Day, whose western magic (the kind that involves pentangles) is ineffective inside the camp. The fact that Barclay and Day support opposites of the war provides a source of tension despite their childhood friendship. The fact that Barclay blames Day for his sister’s death creates more than tension.

Like many novels that rely upon magic and the supernatural to fuel the plot, I think Andersonville might have been a better book without the magic. The dramatic setting and Barclay’s multifaceted personality lend themselves to a more serious work of fiction. Still, the story is fun. It goes the way a horror fan would expect it to go. That might disappoint readers who are looking for surprises, but strong characters and fast action overcome the story’s weaknesses.

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