The Baraboo Guards

Prairie Oak Press, Madison, WI 53703

A book review

by

J.C. Sullivan

     When it comes to the American Civil War, surviving first-person diaries and letters are an insightful historical glimpse. Irish-American writer, John K. Driscoll, has crafted a novel about Company K of the Second Wisconsin Infantry Regiment of the Federal Army of the Potomac, known on both sides as the fierce Black Hats of the Iron Brigade. The Baraboo Guards reads as if Driscoll lived the experience of wearing the black hat issued by General John Gibbon.

     Driscoll's attention to detail is natural, refreshing and very life-like, i.e., believable.  For example, as the Army of the Potomac slogs along, a trooper loses his shoe in the mud! Throughout the novel Driscoll puts you in the column to smell the mud and feel the bone-weariness of forced marches. You smell the morning coffee, feel the throat's parchness during the first combat, experience the pangs of the hungry stomach, lust of flesh and despair of soul.  The Baraboo Guards are alive and Driscoll's characters are developed quite fully, one of whom is Murphy.

     He’s a loveable loser whose soulmate is a whiskey bottle. His self-imposed sadness and (dare I say Catholic) guilt burdens and torments him over having left his mother and siblings in Ireland. Murphy skipped across hard-luck crossroads for many years before his association with the Baraboo Guards. Through the camaraderie of military service he is brought to a realization of the truth of his life; the finding of himself through The Baraboo Guards - the resulting love of his fellow man. Like my own reaction, other readers will love him in spite of his societal 'shortcomings.'

     Driscoll's principle character, Sauk County's James Peck, overcomes his many demons too.  Like Murphy, the Baraboo Guards bring him from youthful naivety and imperfection along a path of spiritual growth, self-discovery and self-esteem, as he becomes a seasoned, battle-wise veteran, eventually capable of being fully human.  His eventual coolness while commanding men under fire earns him the respect of his troops.

     Driscoll, a student of the Civil War, is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.  Perhaps one of the reasons he writes as if he was there is because he has marched and camped with the 1st Virginia (Reenactment) and lectures widely on Civil War topics.  Veterans and non-veterans reading the Baraboo Guards will find it both a soldier's story and a human story, for the Baraboo Guards are shared spirit and emotions. Driscoll evokes from the reader a full range of emotions through the experiences of his characters. We are shocked, angered, overjoyed, saddened, despaired and impassioned as he reveals the angel and the devil in us, while he successfully separates the warrior from the war.

                

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