The Parting: a Story of West Point on the Eve of the Civil War

It is July 18, 1861 near Winchester, Virginia. The Civil War has begun, and Confederate Lieutenant John Pelham, formerly of the West Point Class of 1861, is about to confront his former classmates in the First Battle of Bull Run.

The confident Pelham bears little resemblance to the seventeen-year-old who journeyed alone five years earlier from Jacksonville, Alabama, to West Point, New York, to enter the United States Military Academy. As the class begins its final year, Pelham meets Clara Bolton, a Philadelphian belle who captures his heart. In the months that follow, Pelham and his classmates witness the unraveling of the Union and the birth of the Confederacy, against the political backdrop of slavery and states' rights, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the fire-eaters of the South and the abolitionists of the North.

ForeWord Clarion Review
 
The Parting: A Story of West Point on the Eve of the Civil War
Richard Barlow Adams
Five Stars (out of Five)

Set in the year before the start of the Civil War, The Parting captures both the excitement and tension of that troubling and divisive time in American history. Although a full third of the novel is devoted to what may seem a frivolous romance between cadets and visiting college girls during a week in the summer of 1860, this element of the storyline is more than just light entertainment. It provides a scrupulous look into the way the young, privileged elite of the time comported themselves in study and play, how they treated one another, and how they viewed their world and the roles they felt required to play in it.

The romance also provides a backdrop for the real story of the book: a country and a class driven apart by conflicting loyalties and beliefs on issues of family, politics, region, and, of course, slavery.  The characters' opinions on these controversial issues drive the plot and propel the narrative through the remainder of that last, sweet summer of 1860 and into the increasingly contentious fall and winter before the outbreak of war the following spring.

All in all, and despite the heady issues of the day, Adams' writing is charming, entertaining, and at times even light...a delightful yet poignant look at a generation--and a country--about to lose its innocence in the fires of civil war.
 
Mark G. McLaughlin