The Notebook
Overall: 3.5/5
Spoilers: Moderate
TL;DR: Super solid first half leads into a little rocky second half, and finally falls apart at the end.
***
By blurb alone, this book is basically everything I love about fiction. Historical fiction combining Native American history and the Civil War, with a focus on medical technology of the day. On those points alone, this book does a phenomenal job of being accurate without being accusatory, in terms of lifestyle, history, political views, culture, and so on. The characters have strong opinions and often act on those opinions, but they never preach to the audience. This isn't a social or political hit piece. It is simple, narrativized history.
The first problem is that the style is inconsistent. It opens up with the death of the MC and his son going through his things and, as it happens, reading his journals. That's the whole premise of the style, and it showed echoes of The Scarlet Letter in that regard. You're not reading literal journal entries or literal newspaper articles, but narrativized versions. And that's great because it keeps things moving. It never gets too close to the MC. I can only assume, then, that the author realized the actual limitations of this style roughly a third of the way through because you start to read sections that go beyond the scope of the journal. Third-person limited turns into third-person omniscient. Now, this does not detract from the story itself in any way, but when you go into it with the expectation that you're reading a man's journals and find passages of information that he shouldn't have, it's a little...odd. Even Shaman's sections are less disorienting because he's the one reading, he has his own memories to add. But there are other sections that neither of them should know.
The second issue is MC's total pivot on the war. He is a self-described pacifist, does not believe in violence. He is quite opposed to the war at all, regardless of the arguments of either side. The strong opinions of his wife, kids, and neighbors exhaust him. For many chapters, he says that he is going to stay home and care for his regular patients, they need him, he'll get the war stories when the young guns trickle home. Then, suddenly one day, he does an absolute about-face (pun intended) and goes off to sign up for the Union as a doctor. His entering as a doctor is nothing out of the ordinary, but the decision-making process is never explored except in maybe one or two sentences. One page, you're expecting to read about life on the periphery of the Civil War (which would have been interesting), and then the author decided that that would be boring so let's throw him into war, why not?
The third issue I have with the story overall is the wrap-up. It opens up with Shaman going home and reading his father's journals. This is basically the first ten pages to introduce us to the story. This tale only comprises about eighty percent of the pages. The last fifth (or maybe more) of the book is Shaman's life afterwards, a period of I think about six months or so. And it just...doesn't....end... It doesn't end. It's like reading over 100 pages of epilogues. And then one more thing. And then one more thing. And then one more thing. And then this. And then that. And then one more thing. It doesn't know how to end. I skimmed the last twenty pages and basically nothing of interest happens.
Other than that third issue with the ending, nothing is so egregious that it really warrants more than a raised eyebrow. If these were the only issues, I would have no problems recommending the book, and I would even rate it a 4.5.
My biggest gripe comes from one of the subplots. A woman is murdered. She works for the MC, he considers her a very dear friend, and it is a brutal homicide. But this is frontier America on the cusp of the Civil War, so resources are already limited. Add in that she's Native American, and no one really cares enough to investigate anyway. MC does a little investigating of his own, gets a couple of good suspects, and is then "warned off". He can't get any help, so he basically resigns himself to the fact that he will never know who killed her. He goes back every now and again to think and investigate, but nothing happens.
Until it does. And it is so contrived, it is horrendous. The mystery is solved early on, he knows who did it, but resolving the mystery is literarily offensive. It's not impossible, but the improbability is ridiculous and serves only to assuage those who "just can't right now" and must have closure. Having no real closure would have made more sense to the story, but I guess we needed something to push it along. Again, the style goes from narrativized journal entries to, well, not quite that. It gets too invested in itself too late. Breaking the style and pushing out this ridiculous closure arc was wholly disorienting and disappointing.
It's not a bad read. It really isn't. For a history nerd, this book is a gold mine. For the casual reader, well, it exists.
***
Overall: 3.5/5
Spoilers: Moderate
TL;DR: Super solid first half leads into a little rocky second half, and finally falls apart at the end.
