Ride with the Devil

Rating:
Summary: pleasantly unromantic
Review: After starting out as a short story in the Missouri Review, this tale was expanded into the novel Woe to Live On, then made into a movie, by Ang Lee, as Ride With the Devil. Just to add to the confusion, the book was then rereleased in a movie tie-in version as Ride with the Devil. At any rate, it is a brisk, brutal, sometimes funny portrayal of a small band of Southern guerilla fighters, the First Kansas Irregulars, loosely associated with Quantrill (the Devil of the new title, as in "the Devil knows how to ride," a grudging compliment he was paid), as they carry out a series of increasingly bloody and senseless raids, killing men, women, children, and ultimately each other.

The narrator of the book is Jake Roedel, sixteen at its start, a young German orphan, often victimized by the surprising anti-German animus of his fellow bushwhackers. Woodrell makes a fairly daring choice in having the boy commit a brutality quite early in the book, thereby establishing that there is nothing romantic or heroic about their War. However, this also puts a considerable distance between the reader and the ostensible hero, making it hard to care too much about his eventual fate.

At least since Ken Burns's Civil War series there's been a tendency to look back at the War a little too fondly; and, of course, Southerners have been inclined to do so for much longer. This book offers a much needed antidote to such silliness, reminding us of just how ugly and wasteful a thing it was, and of how surely any war degrades into hatreds and killing, no matter how "noble" the cause..

GRADE : B-

Rating:
Summary: pleasantly unromantic
Review: After starting out as a short story in the Missouri Review, this tale was expanded into the novel Woe to Live On, then made into a movie, by Ang Lee, as Ride With the Devil. Just to add to the confusion, the book was then rereleased in a movie tie-in version as Ride with the Devil. At any rate, it is a brisk, brutal, sometimes funny portrayal of a small band of Southern guerilla fighters, the First Kansas Irregulars, loosely associated with Quantrill (the Devil of the new title, as in "the Devil knows how to ride," a grudging compliment he was paid), as they carry out a series of increasingly bloody and senseless raids, killing men, women, children, and ultimately each other.

The narrator of the book is Jake Roedel, sixteen at its start, a young German orphan, often victimized by the surprising anti-German animus of his fellow bushwhackers. Woodrell makes a fairly daring choice in having the boy commit a brutality quite early in the book, thereby establishing that there is nothing romantic or heroic about their War. However, this also puts a considerable distance between the reader and the ostensible hero, making it hard to care too much about his eventual fate.

At least since Ken Burns's Civil War series there's been a tendency to look back at the War a little too fondly; and, of course, Southerners have been inclined to do so for much longer. This book offers a much needed antidote to such silliness, reminding us of just how ugly and wasteful a thing it was, and of how surely any war degrades into hatreds and killing, no matter how "noble" the cause..

GRADE : B-

Rating:
Summary: Engaging historical fiction
Review: Civil war history buffs will love this novel, as the fiction dovetails quite well with historical facts. Some real-life characters appear briefly in this story (William Quantrill, Cole Younger and others) but not in a way that is disrespectful to historical accounts. One of the story's major fictional characters, Black John Ambrose, is evidently the real-life bushwacker Bloody Bill Anderson, who was notorious for his ruthless "no-parole" tactics. The story is full of wonderful conflicts. The main character, Jake Roedel, is distrusted by his Southern companions because of his German descent (most Germans were "Union men.") Yet the bushwacking band to which Jake belongs favors murdering his fellow Dutchmen. Another surprising character is Holt, the black man and former slave, fighting for the Southern cause out of loyalty to his 'owner' and friend George Clyde. I was also taken by the quality of the dialogue in this book. The characters speak with a language that is at once backwoodsy and eloquent. This book stands on it's own as a solid piece of work, but is even more enjoyable if you know some of the history on which it's based. For that, read The Devil Knows How To Ride (a Quantrill bio) by Edward Leslie. Then read this book, and while you're at it, rent the movie. You won't be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: "Ride With the Devil" an enlightening, engrossing read
Review: Distrust misspelled, error-laden reviews that call this book boring. It is anything but.

From page one, it is an engrossing story of life in the middle of a war machine, a whirlpool where the wrong look or word can find allies turned to enemies and where survival sometimes depends on doing things that will haunt you forever.

That is the position in which teenaged Jacob Roedel finds himself when he defies his Union-sympathizing father to follow his life-long friend, Jack Bull Chiles, into the ranks of a gang of Missouri-based Bushwhackers.

Jake's fellow Bushwhackers are a gang of cutthoats and bigots not easily trusting of a man who turns his back on his family's loyalties to fight with them.
They call Jake "Dutchy" and - when his father is killed - make no move to avenge the death, instead telling Jake that he basically should have expected to see his father dead, since Jake's own reputation was so notorious.

But as the war continues to take its toll, Jake increasingly questions the values and motives of the men he once called allies - and prompts the reader to do the same.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. Initially I read it because I really liked the movie of the same name. However, upon finishing reading Ride With The Devil I came to like it as much, if not more than the movie. I would recommend this book to people who like war stories, westerns, or just a good adventure. This book is extremely easy to read and follow and will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to the end. You will fall in love with the characters and the author does a wonderful job of making you feel what the characters feel, so that their small triumphs make you feel ecstatic and their sorrows make you cry. This book is wonderful and you should read it!

Rating:
Summary: Ride With the Devil
Review: I regret not checking this one out from the library before I bought it. If you like books that stir up some emotion or that are thought provoking, dont get this book. If you like books that are exciting and full of suspence, dont get this book. This book is very boring. It doesnt get very deep into what people are thinking and its not exciting; it has no redemming qualities whatsoever. I forced myself to finish this book just because I paid for it. If you want some good historical fiction that is actually enjoyable to read, get John Jakes or Larry McMurty. Dont waist your time or money on this one. I am not sure why I even gave this book 2 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Huck Finn in Hell
Review: The influence of both Twain and Cormac McCarthy are fairly clear to see in Daniel Woodrell's Ride with Devil. The sheer carnage reminds one of McCarthy's Outer Dark and Blood Meridian. But there's more. Ride With the Devil is also a coming of age novel telling the story of Jake Roedel, a young Bushwhacker (and immigrant's son), who has not known a woman, but who has killed 15 men.

In Woodrell's hands, Jake is a complex mix of child and killer. He has been hardened by a war that, in the contested border areas of Missouri & Kansas, was as murderous as modern day Bosnia. Robbery, murder, torture, in an eye for an eye conflict, was the coin of the day. Nevertheless, the reader senses the human Jake trying to peak out from beyond the callus. Sometimes it's a moment of tragically misplaced pity for a northern militia acquaintance, or his growing interest about the woman, the widow Sue Lee, of his "near" brother Jack Bull. And then there's growing friendship with Holt, a freed slave who has been riding with the bushwhackers. A common ground gradually develops between the despised immigrant's son, and the mistrusted black man, as they see the south fall apart due to invasion. Interestingly, Woodrell is able to show both characters growing dissatisfaction for the southern cause, as its increasingly being fought (the raid on Lawrence being a point of true descent), while at the same time retaining their hate for northerners who seek to impose, through invasion, new rules for the old. A subtle truth that historians still can't seem to get right, but which acquires an awful plausibility in the half-boy, half-man voice of Roedel. This is fine novel that should be probably be viewed beyond the genre of a western and/or historical fiction. Certainly, the romance of the novel, is of a truer nature, given it is a time of war, than that of the prize winning Cold Mountain. Ride With the Devil can sit quite comfortably beside that Frazier's fine novel. It has it's own grim, but ultimately hopeful truths, to pass on.

Rating:
Summary: Great Civil War Novel
Review: This is one of the best Civil War novels I've read. It deals with the border war in Missouri and Kansas, where atrocities on both sides were far too common. The author did a good job of getting the facts right and keeping the story interesting from start to finish. His sense of humor lightens up a story that would otherwise be pretty depressing. If you'd like an idea of what it was like to live in that part of the country during the war, read this book or watch the movie (which was also outstanding).

Whenever I read about the horrible things that happened in that part of the country, I'm amazed that the people there were able to put it behind them and get along after the war. It seems like it could easily have turned into our own version of the Middle East, where the fighting goes on generation after generation.

Rating:
Summary: Ride With the Devil
Review: This is the first book that I have read by Daniel Woodrell, and if this is an an example, well, I'm hooked for life. This is a wonderful book. The narrative, as seen in the first person by young Jake Roedel is absolutely gripping in its understatement. I could just see the whole scene of Civil War era in Missori unfold before me. I read it in two evenings, and then reread parts that really gripped me. Do yourself a favor, pick it up, turn of the phone and sit back for a "ride with the devil"