Nell Joslin’s spectacular debut novel Measure of Devotion is a Civil War odyssey that follows thirty-six-year-old Susannah Shelburne from her South Carolina home to Lookout Mountain, Tennessee where her severely wounded son Francis lies. In October 1863, word reached Susannah and her husband Jacob that Francis had been injured near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Jacob was too ill to travel, so Susannah packed bandages, linens, beans, and potatoes, and servant and friend Letty’s homemade mixtures of goldenseal paste, fever-reducing tinctures, dried herbs, smoked meat, and jars of jam and pickles. Susannah sewed gold pieces into her clothing and boarded a train for her long journey. Jacob and Susannah never believed in the Confederate cause, but Francis did, so he defied his parents’ wishes and enlisted on his eighteenth birthday in September 1861. Letters had been their only contact since that day.
When Susannah arrives in Tennessee, feverish, and disoriented Francis is unhappy with his northern-sympathizing mother, whose enforced hygiene and care rescues him from the brink of death. While she nurses him, she becomes friends with Claude, a delightful young soldier assigned to help Francis. They work together to make the small farmhouse where they're staying into a cooperative venture with the assistance of enslaved Shadrach and others including the capable and kind Dr. Andreas. Every character in this brilliant novel is an original and unique being, and I'm sure I would recognize them immediately if I encountered them.
Lincoln’s words from his Gettysburg Address form the novel’s thesis: “[F]from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” Thus, Susannah moves through the tortured war serving everyone she meets with the full measure of her devotion. Measure of Devotion is a page-turner in that the reader is compelled to turn the pages to learn what will happen next on Susannah’s journey. However, the reader must stop to ponder the beauty of the evocative prose that makes every part of the journey come alive.
We don't just follow her journey, we’re part of it. “Toward morning the rain stopped, and the driver pulled up near a stream to water the mules. He and Titus rolled and tied the canvas curtains, and soon the sun was rising behind us in the southeast, a gold ribbon of light beneath the remnants of clouds. To the north and west the sky emerged in mother-of-pearl, and the mountain air was still and chilly. We traveled through thick woods, with plentiful oaks and hickories amid the evergreen trees and a dense understory of laurel and rhododendron knotted over with thorny vines of smilax. Twice we passed former encampments where black circles of old cook-fires pocked the ground in a clearing of rough tree stumps and trampled underbrush. It had been raining here for weeks. Wheel ruts and hoof prints lingered in thick mud.
Presently the driver pointed to our destination, which was still, several miles away. It was a small white farmhouse near the eastern base of massive, square-looking Lookout Mountain.”
Determined to bring Francis home, Susannah endures the privations and horrors of the war and sacrifices all within her power to ensure Francis’s recovery. Her uncanny ability to bring out the best in everyone she meets and to do what must be done to deal with those without redeeming qualities serves her well. Her story is set wholly within the Civil War, but at times it feels as if it were holding a mirror to today. “There would always be lies and the violence that was essential to perpetuate them. Yet there was still the possibility of living as though one were whole. Of standing against chaos with nothing but the force of determination to uphold a delicate civilization.”
Summing it Up: Measure of Devotion is a debut novel that is bound to enter the canon of classic Civil War literature. That it's told from a woman’s viewpoint makes it unique. That it honors humanity during a time of inhumanity makes it a reminder of Dr. King’s words about the arc of the moral universe being long but bending toward justice. Nell Joslin’s brilliant Civil War novel reminds us to bend toward justice as we stand against chaos to preserve our delicate civilization.
Rating: Five Stars
Publication Date: May 20, 2025
Categories: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Pigeon Pie, Super Nutrition, Book Club
What Others Are Saying:
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nell-joslin/measure-of-devotion/
Historical Novel Society: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/measure-of-devotion/
“Nell Joslin’s accomplished debut novel explores the loss and destruction of war; through her protagonist, Susannah, the reader witnesses the moral depths of what unites and holds people together as well as what tears them apart.” — Jill McCorkle, bestselling author of Life After Life and others
“With her debut novel, Nell Joslin proves herself as fearless as her heroine, Susannah Shelburne, a Southern abolitionist whose devotion to her son, a wounded Confederate soldier, propels her directly into harm’s way. In vivid, absorbing prose, Joslin brings to life a narrator as steely and resourceful as she is spacious-hearted. Susannah’s story—compelling, unforgettable, wholly original—is a brilliant and necessary addition to American Civil War literature.” —Kim Church, author of Byrd
