Spoilers!
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, America was torn asunder, with Southern states pillaged and occupied by Union soldiers, crime rampant and law only a nominal notion inasmuch as it could be enforced. When a Union soldier, nearly killed by an explosion at the tail end of the war, awakes from a seven-month-long coma in September of 1865, he learns his sister, husband, and one-year-old niece have been senselessly murdered. So begins Paulette Jiles’ unforgettable 2023 book, Chenneville: A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Revenge. A revenge story set in the tatters of war, Jiles’ book is also a classic journey story, taking the titular character from his well-to-do home in Missouri to by-his-sight foreign Texas. Chenneville is a gentleman whose heart has also been torn asunder by violence of a different kind, but he’s also, by necessity, a pugilist for chivalry and righteousness. That made him one of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered this year.
Truly, it is hard to wrap my brain around how the United States quite literally reconstituted itself in the wake of the Civil War. Yes, I know the big beats of the Reconstruction Era, but days, weeks, a year out, what was life like in Missouri or Texas? How permeating was the law? And amid all this, too, is a rapidly changing world, with the telegraph, the proliferation of stagecoaches, and hotels or stage-houses for travelers. (The telegraph and especially the hotel predate the Civil War, but I tend to think in terms of common usage.) For Chenneville, who has French roots (he’s from St. Louis), his is a patient, steady, simmering rage and bid for vengeance. First, he must recover from his near-fatal war wound. His balance is unsteady, his shooting off the mark, and his strength not what it once was. He still has his imposing height, but his imposing figure needs to be filled out. After about a year of recovering, he sets out for a man named Dodd, who also goes by other aliases, he’s figured out is the likely perpetrator of his family’s tragedy.
Dodd is also a fellow Union soldier, who served with an Illinois regiment, but if anything, he wore the blue coat as a shield for his violent tendencies rather than an ideology. This Union soldier being a sociopathic serial killer is the other fascinating element of Jiles’ book: sociopaths, or serial killers, didn’t come into popular imagination until Jack the Ripper in London about 20 years after the events of this book (America’s first noted serial killer, H.H. Holmes, would be a few years thereafter). But surely sociopaths and serial killers existed prior to then, and again, what is more ripe a land for sowing one’s evil oats than post-Civil War America? Chaos and confusion provide ample camouflage. Chenneville reflects on Dodd’s nature from a conversation he had with a coroner, who told Chenneville, “We always want to give them human motivations but they don’t have any. So they are always one up on us.” That is the scariest aspect of a serial killer; there is no human motivation one can find even in other murder cases, so it’s just wanton cruelty for the sake of it, which is harder to pin down and catch.
A lovely subplot of Chenneville is Vicky, a rare female telegrapher, who Chenneville becomes besotted (his word) with, as he receives and transmits telegraph messages. At one point, Chenneville is staying with an Englishman telegrapher at his station, which is where he first learns of Vicky. Literally, the day after, Dodd arrives at that same station and kills the Englishman. Again, for no rhyme or reason other than because he wanted to. Dodd is also cruel in the sense of stealing and/or buying horses only to ride them to lameness, abandon them, and start over again, as he rides hard to probably San Antonio to board a ship to Mexico. On the flip side, Chenneville not only is very giving and kind to his horses, not only takes in one of Dodd’s discarded lame horses, but he also rescues a dog and her three puppies and then ensures the three puppies have a proper home while he keeps the mother. What a guy! The way to my heart as a protagonist is taking the time to care for and consider animals! That’s the compelling dimension to Chenneville’s character. He’s not blinded by his bid for revenge. He’s very much wide-eyed about it, and it’s that wide-eyedness that enables his chivalry when it’s called for.
But yes, later, after the Englishman’s murder, which a U.S. Marshal, Giddens, is tracking Chenneville for — even though he also suspects this Dodd character of it, Giddens wants to uphold some semblance of the law — Chenneville and Vicky happen to meet. They fall for each other, but Chenneville knows a man out for revenge with an uncertain future (owing to the uncertain outcome of that bid for revenge, as well as being wanted by Giddens) cannot give himself to her. He parts without further elongating their dalliance.
Chenneville’s only enemy on this journey, as it were, aside from the threat of Giddens arresting him, is his own internal resolve to carry out this revenge. His resolve was tested with Vicky, of course, but it’s especially tested as he ventures further into the heart of Texas, not knowing how he’ll catch up to or find Dodd. Even then, even in his deepest doubts, Chenneville is a chivalrous and righteous man. He quite literally stops a mob from likely murdering a thief, Lemuel, a young boy who helped nurse Chenneville back to health after his coma. And it’s a fortuitous intervention by Chenneville, as Lemuel reneges quite quickly on his vow to never steal again by stealing a letter Dodd had sent an Illinois soldier (Chenneville reckoned rightly that Dodd would stay close to the Illinois regiment’s movements). The letter states Dodd is in San Antonio.
Now, I kept wondering how Jiles was going to end this book. Would Chenneville get his revenge and it would be rather straightforward? Even if it was, would he still feel a certain way about it different than he expected? Or would he cease his revenge at the last moment, perhaps the very last second, thinking better of it after all? Jiles went a third way I did not expect at all. Which is, Chenneville arrives in San Antonio where Giddens is waiting for him. He informs Chenneville that Dodd died a week ago after a bar fight with a fiddler where the fiddler bested him, killing him with his fiddlestick. That is the darkest, most humorous of jokes from the universe: Dodd, an unrepentant, remorseless killer was killed by a fiddlestick, to which one could only mutter, “Fiddlesticks!” at the stars in vain. And that’s part and parcel with Jiles’ book because she imbues Chenneville and his revenge journey with plenty of dry humor and bits.
Jiles wrote a beautiful, lovely, horrific revenge story set in the perfect time and circumstance, and with the most appropriate of endings, as any of the possibilities I mentioned would have been difficult to do justice. Indeed, to do justice to Dodd’s crimes is for him to meet a senseless fate and quirk of the universe, too. I would have followed Chenneville on his horse anywhere. This was one of my favorite reads of the year. Well-done, very well-done.
Addendum: Jiles died in July of this year, and Chenneville was her last book. What a book to end what seems like a remarkable career on.
Milam's Musings 