The Jackal’s Mistress: A Novel, Chris Bohjalian, author; narrator
The Civil War is raging and Libby Steadman has been resolutely trying to keep her farm afloat. She supplies the Confederates with flour from her gristmill. Peter, her husband, was captured by the Yankees, and she heard that he was in a prisoner of war camp. She hopes they have not killed him. It has been a long time since she heard any news.
Peter freed his father’s slaves when his father passed, and two of them, Sally and Joseph remained with her as employees. They were paid freedmen who were integral to her survival. She is also caring for her niece Jubilee. Jubilee’s mother had passed and her father was away fighting for the Confederate Army.
When Sally finds a critically wounded Union soldier abandoned in a neighbor’s farmhouse, she rescues him, though she knows the penalty if he is discovered would be horrific for Sally, Joseph, herself and Jubilee. She was unable to leave a human being alone to die. How she hoped someone on the other side might extend the same compassion to her husband, if he was wounded and needed help.
Captain Jonathan Weybridge is in very grave condition. He has lost a limb and a couple of fingers on his hand. His wounds need care. He had been left to starve and die of thirst while in terrible pain. How, she wondered, could anyone do that to another human being? (Would that not also make her wonder how anyone could believe in slavery?) She engages the help of a doctor who loves his alcohol and bribes him to keep silent.
To save her own life, the lives of those in her household, and the injured Jackel, as Jubilee insists on calling him, Libby must truly compromise her values, but which values should she honor? She rises to the occasion and puts human life before the politics of the war. The Jackal has told her that he is 24, has a wife and two sons in Vermont. His last letter from his wife was awhile ago. He knows nothing about how they are. He wants to live to return to his home. Jubilee agrees to write a letter home for him, since his injuries prevent him from being able to do it himself. Sally and Joseph, the freed slaves, want him to live also. They risk their lives caring for him, because he supports their freedom. Jubilee and Libby, however, are conflicted regarding slavery and the political situation. Jubilee has been well indoctrinated against the Northern Yankees, but Libby has a kind heart and tries to help her see that they are doing the right thing in saving the Captain. Although she seems to see him as a human being, she never stops calling Weybridge the Jackal! She also doesn’t understand why Joseph and Sally did not have the same rights and privileges as she did.
Are all those who do not understand that slavery is wrong simply children in need of maturing? Perhaps they are not all evil, but just uneducated or indoctrinated to hate others. The book surely points out the injustice of slavery and other forms of oppression because if Libby could understand that her enemy might deserve help, common sense should dictate that the treatment of slaves was wrong and barbaric. Still, she lived in the South and disobeying the Confederates by caring for the enemy would make her guilty of treason, so she had to make a choice, wise or not, it was the only one she believed that a decent person could make.
The bullet’s mistress was defined as a bullet used as a last resort when there was no hope. Did she become the Jackal’s mistress because it was the only way forward for both of them, because it was the choice of last resort? Was it a wise choice? Was it the last resort?
The question that comes to the forefront on every page is how does one fight injustice? What is right and wrong? Also, what kind of a human being leaves another human being behind to die? What purpose does a war serve? Could the issues be resolved without the fighting and violence resulting in death and destruction? How can human beings be cruel to any human being, no matter who that person is?
The evil of some of the men who took advantage of their power was exposed, and they were disposed of quickly by Libby and Joseph. Unexpectedly, I cheered the murders on because it felt like justice was served. We are all the same. We all bleed. Some of us, however, are evil. Evil must not succeed. The problem is that it still exists and always seems to be present, even when in a disguised form. Is it even possible to root it out? “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”, Edmund Burke. We must remember to do something instead.