THE BLACK-BANDED ENVELOPE is the fourth installment in G.S. Boarman’s series of novels set in Reconstruction-era America. The story of Kentucky farm owner Mary Warner and her dealings with the nascent Secret Service is told on a magisterial scale with verve and imagination.
Historical novels of this length and complexity tend to rise and fall on their verisimilitude. In this respect, Boarman delivers handsomely. The sheer attention to detail on display here is splendid; one gets the impression of exhaustive research put to good use. This is a delicate balancing act, and bad genre writers lacking plots or mistaking historical detail for structure will exhibit their research in profusion as compensation. Boarman is careful (what many writers of historical fiction are not) to leave on the page only such details as will illuminate the story or the inner lives of the characters. Elsewhere, the historical knowledge is worn lightly, emerging in such passing details as the fact that President Grant’s White House had stables or that 15-cent banknotes were once in circulation.
The result is a richly textured piece of writing. Warner’s life is thrown into confusion when, after meeting with President Grant in Washington, she receives a mourning letter in a black-banded envelope from the president informing her (or so it seems) of the deaths of Argent and Merritt, the two agents who escorted her to Washington. The resulting mystery extends across state lines, taking in such subjects as counterfeit money, murder, and corruption. The plot unfolds at a measured pace, but without any lagging. Mary, or “M,” as she is referred to by Argent and Merritt (the epithet lends her character an air of contemporaneity without compromising the period atmosphere) is likeable, believable, and courageous. Though given to bouts of self-examination, Boarman is careful not to have her lapse into maudlin habits.
The tenor of the Reconstruction era for the average man or woman has always been difficult to fathom, not from an intellectual perspective but from an emotional one. The sense of grudges left unaddressed, the order that is not really order, seemed to have receded quickly. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! aside, it’s hard to bring many really good novels set in this period to mind (and the former hasn’t aged well while the latter is considered one of the least accessible works in English literature). Boarman’s intent is not to sum up the era, but THE BLACK-BANDED ENVELOPE does evoke it—and to splendid effect. Few historical novels conjure the sights, smells, and mindsets of days gone by so completely.
Benefiting from naturalistic dialogue and rich period detail, G.S. Boarman’s THE BLACK-BANDED ENVELOPE is a magisterial evocation of Reconstruction-era America.
~ Craig Jones for IndieReader