Secessia - Kent Wascom

3.5/5 stars

It's not that the book wasn't well-written (it was) or deal with subject matter that I found interesting (life during the Union Army occupation of New Orleans during the Civil War).

It wasn't that the author's prose wasn't brilliant (it was).

It's the number of times I considered abandoning the book until I finished it out of sheer stubbornness.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I'm not keen on third-person present as a writing voice.

There. I said it.

The book is a well-written look at a challenging historical period, through the eyes of a woman of color passing for white, her son, and the man who becomes her lover after her husband's death.

However, I didn't care for the authorial voice and it made reading the book a struggle.