Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground

by Peter Svenson

Overview

A finalist for the National Book Award, Battlefield chronicles the author’s experiences building a farmhouse on a forty-acre site near Harrisonburg, Virginia, which years before had been the site of the Civil War “Battle of Cross Keys,” in which Confederate forces stopped a Union advance and provided Stonewall Jackson with an important victory in his Shenandoah Valley campaign. Svenson intertwines a detailed description of the battle with self-deprecating accounts of a fledgling hay farmer attempting to farm his land while holding a new “army” of real-estate developers at bay. While reviving his long-neglected farmland, he unearths spent cartridges and artillery shells, and meditates on how best to commemorate the men who fell in battle on his forty acres. Exploring the intimate connections between landscape and history, Battlefield offers an engaging, reverent, and highly personal view of the Civil War and its ongoing legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580801867
Publisher:	Burford Books
Publication date:	12/29/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter Svenson is an artist and writer. A former resident of Cross Keys, VA, he now lives in Fayetteville, NY.

Editorial Reviews

"This compelling memoir is by turns charming and chilling. As the artist-author restores a forty-acre farm field and builds a house in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, making the mistakes of a city slicker but somehow bumbling through to success, he also uncovers the story of the Battle of Cross Keys that was fought on his land 125 years earlier. Alternating chapters focus contrapuntally on the 1980s and 1860s, keeping the reader glued to these fascinating pages."

James M. McPherson

Past and present interface as Svenson juxtaposes depictions of the battle with accounts of his struggle to produce a crop of hay. The death-grapples of blue and gray regiments echo in Svenson's modern-day war against mini-malls, pesticides and similar modern detritus. This chronicle is a gem--a moving military pastoral whose excellence commends it to a wide audience.

Publsihers Weekly

You don’t have to be an amateur farmer or a Civil War buff to admire what Peter Svenson achieves in Battlefield. . . . The reader watches with increasing fascination as the Union and Confederate ghosts of a small but deadly skirmish on June 8, 1862 come alive again between the rows of the author’s golden harvest. It’s quite a literary accomplishment.

The New York Times - Herbert Mitgang

Vivid . . . . The chapters of warfare and farm work ultimately knit together; the reader’s understanding of the forty acres makes the battle more comprehensible and more terrible, and the battle’s horrors render the current peaceful state of the land more precious.

The New Yorker

Now with a new foreword and afterword by the author, Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground is a true-life memoir that tells two stories in parallel - one of attempting to revive long-neglected hay farmland, and one of the Civil War "Battle of Cross Keys", which once took place on that farmland. In the "Battle of Cross Keys", Confederate forces blocked a Union advance and earned a victory fo General Stonewall Jackson. Author Peter Svenson speaks at length of searching for the best way to honor and comme1norate the men who sacrificed their lives on his forty acres. Exceprts from numerous primary historical sources pepper this narrative, highly recommended especially for Civil War shelves and reading lists.

January 2018 MBR Bookwatch

In 1987 Svenson, an artist, purchased 40 acres of Virginia land and discovered that he owned much of the Civil War battlefield of Cross Keys. As Svenson built a house and learned to farm, he became increasingly interested in the long-forgotten 1862 encounter between Richard Ewell's Confederate division and the Union forces of Charles Fremont. Past and present interface as Svenson juxtaposes depictions of the battle with accounts of his struggle to produce a crop of hay. The death-grapples of blue and gray regiments echo in Svenson's modern-day war against mini-malls, pesticides and similar late-20th-century detritus. This chronicle is a gem--a moving military pastoral whose excellence commends it to a wide audience. First serial to the Washington Post Magazine; paper back rights to Ballantine; BOMC, History Book Club and QPB selections. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly