Woe to Live On

What I loved most about this book was the voice. Woodrell did a fantastic job presenting the period Biblical lyricism through the narrator, Jake Roedel, a reluctant Confederate soldier.

The scene is the largely overlooked Kansas-Missouri front of the US Civil War, where bloody vendettas were just as much of the fighting as were skirmishes between the blue and the gray. We ride with the young men, boys really, as they raid and pillage, hide and survive, and there’s nothing romantic about the loss and pointless savagery. 

This book uses the protagonist's unique perspective to reveal dramatically what a travesty war can be, no matter how noble or ignoble one feels about the cause. This Civil War novel takes place on the savage Missouri-Kansas border (the Lawrence massacre, etc.). The background of Woodrell's main character, Jake Roedel, says he should be on the Union side of the bloody guerilla war; instead, he contributes to what today we'd call war crimes, along with his rebel irregular cohorts. But the tension inherent in Jake's singular perspective pays off, as I came to the same understandings as he did.