Skip to product information
1 of 1

Penguin Books

Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

Regular price $8.95 USD
Regular price Sale price $8.95 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Title
Title: Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War
Author: Donald McCaig
ISBN: 9780140282658
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2008
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 528
Condition Note: Moderate edge wear. Binding good. May have marking in text. We sometimes source from libraries. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: Widely acclaimed, with comparisons to Margaret Mitchell and Shelby Foote, Jacob's Ladder is a rich and poignant novel. It is the story of Duncan Gatewood, seventeen and heir to the Gatewood Plantation in Virginia. Duncan falls in love with Maggie, a mulatto slave, who bears him a son, Jacob. Maggie and Jacob are sold south, and Duncan is packed off by his irate father to the Virginia Military Institute. As a cadet, Duncan guards the gallows of John Brown; as a man he will fight for Robert E. Lee and the South. Another Gatewood slave, Jesse -- whose love for Maggie is unrequited -escapes to freedom and enlists in Mr. Lincoln's army; in time he will confront his former masters.

Permeated with a wealth of scrupulously researched historical detail, McCaig conjures up the interlocked lives of masters and slaves so skillfully that he has gained praise from African American historians and the descendants of confederate veterans. Jacob's Ladder, lauded by the Virginia Quarterly as "the best Civil War novel ever written, " is an epic tale that resonates with all the bitter glory and deep human shame of America's greatest war.