num_pages: 527
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.
language: English
title: Jacob's Ladder: A Novel of Virginia During the Civil War
titlecomplete: Jacob's Ladder: A Novel of Virginia During the Civil War
genres: Historical, 19th Century, Southern, Civil War, Novels, War, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction, American Civil War
ratings_count: 997
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Library of Virginia Literary Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War Fiction, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, name: John Esten Cooke Fiction Award
publisher: Penguin Books