Sunday Books & Culture
This week’s reviews include Civil War historical fiction in Chris Bohjalian’s “The Jackal’s Mistress” and a window into Stevie Van Zandt’s many passions in his memoir “Unrequited Infatuations.”
Vanessa Sekinger
BOOKS & CULTURE EDITOR
THE JACKAL’S MISTRESS
by Chris Bohjalian
Published by Doubleday (March 11, 2025)
Hardcover $26.00
Audiobook $14.18
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
Living in the midst of Civil War territory, I am always interested in books that cover this part of our past. In this historical novel, the author has creatively expanded upon a true story about a Virginia woman who saved a wounded Vermont Captain in 1864. This story is set in Berryville, around the Battle of Opequon Creek in the Shenandoah Valley. It’s easy to picture soldiers and civilians trying to survive, to preserve their own humanity in the face of appalling odds.
Libby Steadman is a young married woman in her mid-20s. Her husband Peter, a Confederate soldier, has been wounded and the last she heard from him, he was a prisoner in an Ohio camp. He’s been gone so long she can barely remember his face. She continues to run the family grist mill with help from Joseph and Sally, two former slaves who were freed by Peter years earlier. Living there through no choice of her own is Libby’s niece 12-year-old Jubilee. Her father is also fighting the war, and her mother is dead.
Soldiers from the Army of Northern Virginia come to the mill frequently for flour, paying in almost worthless Confederate notes. But the need for Steadman grain lets Libby keep two horses, a cow and chickens. It’s a dismal and barren existence, but enough to keep them alive.
Until Sally hears a voice in the deserted house of a neighbor.
Libby and Joseph search the place and find a gravely wounded Union officer, Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade. He has been left behind to die after surgeons removed part of his shattered leg and mangled hand.
Libby’s decision to take the Captain to her house and try to save him puts everyone she loves in grave danger. But she cannot walk away from a dying man, rationalizing that she hopes a Union woman would have done the same to save her missing husband.
Weybridge, tended by everyone in the house, slowly does regain his health and strength. The fact that Peter freed his slaves, when neighbors around him did not, makes the family a prime target for suspicion when rumors of a wounded Yankee flood the area. In the end, to save everyone, they must try to get Weybridge back to the Union side at Harper’s Ferry.
There is so much I loved about this book. The writing is both powerful and beautiful. The young girl Jubilee, missing out on everything a teenage girl should enjoy because of the war, is both repulsed and drawn to the man she calls The Jackal. Her conversations with him, brittle yet yearning for something new and different, are both heart-wrenching and funny. Everyone is tired of the war, the brutality and the violence. And tired of boundaries – between states, between strangers, between spouses and between right and wrong.
There has been some criticism of the title. The word “Mistress” seems inappropriate describing the relationship between Libby and the Jackal. Perhaps “Guardian Angel” or “Protector” or even “Friend” would be better. But don’t let the title steer you away from this marvelous retelling of history.
Penny A Parrish is a local writer and photographer. View her pictures.
UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS
By Stevie Van Zandt
Published by DaCapo (September 28, 2021)
Paperback $11.99
Audiobook $17.46
Reviewed by Chuck Sekinger
The title of this book had me rushing to the dictionary to look up “unrequited,” which means, “love that is felt by one person but not returned in kind.” Stevie, or “Little Stevie” as he is known now, writes about his many passions as a rock n’ roller, composer, producer, actor, activist, and consigliere. Many of his infatuations were returned with love in kind (and profit) but just as many were not. The book is a confession of his successes and many failures.
Unrequited Infatuations starts with Stevie’s life-long friendship with Bruce Springsteen, their New Jersey roots, and their shared love for performing rock and soul music with a horn section. In the early days, with Stevie as the arranger and Bruce following his creative muse, this dynamic duo created an authentic New Jersey sound that paid homage to the early rock n’ rollers that came before them.
When the E Street band was forming, Stevie’s infatuations led him elsewhere, then back to the Band, and then elsewhere again. His on-going relationship as a “consigliere” to Bruce would eventually lead him back to playing full-time guitar in the E Street Band. His first-hand insight into Bruce’s rise to fame is a story not found anywhere else and worth the read.
He also relates his inspiration for activism. While out with his own band (Men Without Women) in Germany, a young man asks him, “Why is your country putting missiles in my country?” This question launched Stevie into a worldview that became greater than his singular interest in rock n’ roll and ultimately to political activism. After a period of deep reading, Stevie organized many artists to boycott performing at the South African venue Sun City due to the country’s apartheid government. He wrote and produced many of the songs on the album “Sun City, Artists Against Apartheid.” He recounts how he was smuggled into Pretoria to meet with South African revolutionaries to tell them to lay-low and let artists end apartheid through music.
As the saying goes, “80% of success is just showing up.” That quote would describe Stevie’s entry into his acting career. While Stevie, in his full gypsy regalia, was introducing an inductee at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, in the audience was soon to be famous screenwriter and director, David Chase. He immediately sees in Stevie a pivotal character for his next episodical series creation, The Sopranos.
Stevie, never an actor but married to one (Maureen Santoro), would be cast in the role of Tony, but he persuaded Chase to create his own character, Silvio Dante, who would be Tony’s consigliere and the proprietor of the Jersey gang’s unofficial hang the Bada Bing!
After the end of the Sopranos series, two Norwegian writers approached Stevie about a continuation of his mafia character in the unlikely place of Lillehammer, Norway. The series, Lilyhammer, was picked up by Netflix to expand into a European market. It became an unintended success in the USA for Soprano fans wanting more mob violence from “Sil” but more light-heartedly.
Stevie’s many infatuations have made him well-known, but he’s never really become a mainstream frontman, even though he’s tried. He is always in the shadows of greatness but likely part of the commercial success of others as their “consigliere.” Read the book, watch his HBO documentary, and listen to his “Underground Garage” for a full scorecard of Little Stevie’s “Infatuations”.
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