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Expert weaving of history and fiction
ALL OTHER NIGHTS
By Dara Horn
363 pp. W.W. Norton $24.95
Reviewed by Diane Diekman
It is Passover 1862 and Jacob Rappaport is in New Orleans to murder his uncle. Once unable to rebel against his father’s orders, he is now helpless to refuse the orders of his Army superiors. At 19, Jacob, who escaped from an arranged marriage and joined the Union Army, has been sent to New Orleans because his uncle intends to assassinate President Lincoln.
Author Dara Horn does a masterful job of using fictional characters to describe the lives of American Jews during the Civil War. New York City and New Orleans—two of the main settings in the novel—housed the largest concentrations of the 130,000 Jews living in the United States in 1860. All Other Nights is Horn’s third novel. Her previous two, In the Image and The World to Come, both won the National Jewish Book Award.
All Other Nights opens with a blend of well-crafted action and background and keeps a good storytelling pace throughout. But we never get to know Jacob, who comes across as a wooden character without much depth in his internal conflict between personal desire and patriotic duty. It’s as if we see him through a haze. However, Horn’s use of unattributed dialogue by the three Union officers whenever Jacob stands in front of them works well. We don’t know which one is speaking, and the disembodied voices increase our understanding of Jacob’s confusion and frustration.
Jacob’s second assignment—again because of his family connections and Jewish heritage—is to travel to Richmond to marry a Confederate spy. Eugenia Levy is a beautiful young woman, an actress, contortionist, and magician—a Houdini. Jacob lives in the Levy home and becomes a trusted employee as he makes periodic reports to his Union supervisors.
Horn describes a Passover Seder where the first of the traditional Four Questions recited is, “How is this night different from all other nights?” She draws a parallel between Egyptian slavery of the Hebrews and slavery in the Deep South:
Jacob wondered if there could be anything stranger than sitting down to a Passover Seder, the feast of freedom, with every part of the meal served by slaves.
The guests, avoiding eye contact with the servers of the meal, sing Hebrew hymns of thanks for being freed from bondage.
I enjoy books that teach history through experiences of fictional characters. All Other Nights is no exception. I particularly like the author’s note at the end of the book. Horn explains where she got her inspiration for some of the scenes and characters, and describes what happened to the real characters after the war. To portray the unfathomable experience of a slave auction, she has Jacob witness an auction in which the dialogue of the pleading slaves is taken from an 1859 newspaper article written by a man who attended such an auction.
An important character in the book is the historical Judah Benjamin, who was Secretary of State for the Confederacy and previously a U.S. Senator from Louisiana. Horn has Jacob return to his role as a Union spy and become an office clerk for Benjamin. This allows readers to experience the burning of Richmond near the end of the war.
Horn also brings to life the story of General Grant’s 1862 order to expel all Jews from the Department of Tennessee, which included Kentucky and Mississippi, because “The Jews, as a class violated every regulation of trade. . . .” The Army has sent Sergeant Rappaport to Holly Springs where he befriends a tavern owner who is later jailed as a result of the order. According to the author’s note, the order was rescinded by President Lincoln three weeks after its issue.
Although Jacob eventually settles on an identity for himself and his future, the universal questions raised in this story: Is family or society more important during a conflict? How do our values and loyalties determine our life choices? — go unanswered.
“While I have tried to remain loyal to my fact-checking past,” Horn writes, “I can only hope that true Civil War buffs will do me the great honor of respecting my imagination as well.” With All Other Nights, I think she’s earned their respect.
Diane Diekman, a retired U. S. Navy captain, is the author of Navy Greenshirt: A Leader Made, Not Born and Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story.
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