Neverhome, by Laird Hunt

Laird Hunt. Neverhome. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014. 247 pages. ISBN 9780316370134

I really loved the first few pages, but as I read along I enjoyed the book less and less. It came with great blurbs by Paul Auster and Kevin Powers, so I had high hopes for this novel, but it just didn't feel right to me. The book is about a woman, Constance, who leaves home to fight for the union cause in the civil war. She takes on another name, Ash, and leaves her husband behind; being severely short sighted, he wouldn't have been able to shoot. She describes her experiences in battle, when she and two fellow soldiers are kidnapped and how they make their escape, her eventual exposure as a woman, and the accusations against her as a spy. Ash is locked up in an insane asylum, but eventually escapes and makes her way home.

I found the depiction of war to be as compelling as The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, a book that I read in junior high school and then again later in college. The questions that I had throughout the book, such as why Ash felt that she had to go to war are never answered. The ending comes as a shock and is so abrupt that it just left me hanging, with no resolution and no answers about what really happened to her and why. I am very dissatisfied with this ending! The best part of this book is the depiction of war and its horrors; that alone makes Neverhome worth reading.