This is my favourite genre, historical fiction. This novel is set in Charleston South Carolina during the civil war. Is is a fictional story but based on and during factual events centring around the American Civil War. Frank Dawson travelled on a steam ship from South Hampton. He was a well educated man who succeeded in rising through the ranks in the Confederates He was wounded during the war and afterwards was desperate for a job, any job. He got a job as assistant editor for the Charleston Mercury but had opposing views to those traditionally held by that newspaper and its journalists. As the newspaper was failing he seized the opportunity to speak or publish his own mind and he encountered much opposition as one can only imagine in the South when the 14th amendment had been passed. . He admonishes lynching and the massacres of blacks, a view that is highly unpopular at the time. This book is based on historical evens as well as evidence from letters and historical documents belonging to the author herself. It is a very enjoyable read, housing a fountain of information on this era in history. I give it 3 and a half stars.

Literary fiction that drew me in.The author combines her grandparents history with well drawn characters. A story that kept me turning the pages .#netgalley#fsg

Impressive and contemporary, this is a finely written meld of family history and fiction, exploring white privileged and the history of southern racism.

This is an enjoyable enough read, but would be an even better one if the two halves of the book were more balanced, and if the newspaper articles interspersed between some of the chapters were better integrated with the narrative. I found my attention wandering in the earlier chapters whereas the later ones are engaging indeed. It’s the story of Frank Dawson, a newspaper proprietor, whom we meet in 1880s South Carolina. Frank is a man of principals and integrity and struggles with the social and moral issues of post-Civil War America. His thriving newspaper is under threat from a rival paper which is blatantly racist, and the legacy of the War and its difficult aftermath pervade the novel’s pages. However, like Franks’ affairs, the novel doesn’t run smoothly, jumping about in time and space to fill in the back stories, and it wasn’t until we get to 1889 and the main action that, for me, the novel really took off. Frank is by far the most interesting character in the book and the reader’s empathy for him grabs our attention. Based on the author's own great-grandparents, and using original letters and diaries to add authenticity, overall it’s a worthwhile read, even given my caveats, and once the story really gets going, it’s a tense and moving one.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in. It was interesting that the author used letters, diaries and other content to tell this fictionalized account of her great grandparents' relationship.

Now he’s back in another kind of conflict, the alarms and confusions of daily life.

While this novel is fiction, in the preface we are told that the author used authentic content, such as letters, diary entries and published sources of her own family, her great grandparents in particular. Her discomfort in the racism within’ her family is noted, but to ignore the attitudes of the times would be a disservice to the truth, especially of the hardships faced in the fight for equality. Both Frank and Sarah Dawson have thoughts that are easy to judge, such as the ‘distastefulness of mix racing’ Sarah feels. But then you have to sit with that thought, surrounded by the ignorance of the times, these are taught attitudes.

The novel opens with a nightmare Frank Dawson has just awaken from. Despite his wife Sarah’s intuitive nature, and the troubling feeling that remains, he can’t put much stock into dreams, he has enough pressing issues in his daily life than to allow a stranger in his sleep to torment him. As editor and part owner of the Charleston News and Courier his voice is his tool, his opinions strong and not always popular in the south where the war refuses to remain in the past. Death threats aren’t unusual for a man who tries to give black people political power. In fact, his ‘Southern roots’ certainly are in question, being England born can he really be one of them? Maybe he isn’t even really a Captain either! He loves his Charleston, and he wants it to thrive, but to understand the anger we must travel further back.

It is 1861, young Sarah Morgan is nineteen-years old and the ‘war is scattering her family’. The south doesn’t want the north interfering in its affairs, and the anti-slavery perspective isn’t one the south shares, after all they believe they ‘take care of their slaves’ and that they’d be helpless and lost without such care. Fate is about to turn against her family, with the war taking her brothers and threatening every southerner.

In Southampton, Englishman Frank Dawson stands on the deck of the Nashville (a steamer, once a mail ship to be fitted for war) as one of the crew. Unlike the other men, Dawson has a fine education, can speak four languages, read music and has a gentleman’s manners. Certainly he doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the rougher men. Little can one imagine he will rise through the ranks of the Confederate navy. In America, Dawson’s ‘network of friends’ and his intelligence, connections will teach him about the south. Here, he will support his brothers in arms against the north. From the water, he will turn to the land joining into the army. Sarah in the meantime taps into her own shocking nature, finding it necessary to arm herself with a pistol. They are under siege and must run from Baton Rouge with whatever they can carry. Chaos reigns, everything is in ruins, as are the people after the shelling. Sarah is fierce, and often the cries in her diary are, “Oh if I were a man!” because then she could fight off these hypocritcal Yankees, who are destroying everything people like her family have worked for, killing off all the men! He family gets smaller and smaller with each death. It is a world now of devastated women and children.

At the end of war, Dawson has been wounded, desperate for money and a job he soon has an offer to work for the Examiner, but soon Dawson meets B. F. Riordon, with whom he would later create a newspaper with. But first, as the assistant editor for the Charleston Mercury his views on the Fourteenth amendment don’t sit well with the bosses, staunch supporters of Confederacy, not one’s to ‘swallow’ the end of their empire and embrace the future. With the paper failing, it’s an opportunity for Dawson and Riordon to run a paper with truth and promote their south.

Soon, Frank Dawson and Sarah Morgan’s paths merge when Jem, Sarah’s brother, is seriously injured during an ‘incident’ and Dawson rushes to be at his side. So too, does his love blossom for Sarah. One small hitch, Dawson has a wife already but one who is gravely ill. After her passing, the two bond over literature but how to convince Sarah to marry him, particularly when she has no interest in doing ‘what is expected’ of women? The two begin to write each other, and I’m guessing the letters were authentic, oh what a dying art!

You know they marry, or else how could there be this very book about the author’s great grandparents? Dawson’s fall could come from anywhere, his progressive views (such as his stance on anti-lynching), the stories he prints that tell the truth about crimes by condemning always what is wrong, even if it means exposing ‘white South Carolinians’, particularly in the case of the Hamburg Militiamen massacre. History sidenote: Hamburg was an all black Republican community who had members in the militia, which were formed to safeguard said communities. Research the Hamburg Massacre, it will explain the gravity of the situation and why siding with the black community infuriated citizens. There was courage in Dawson and Riordon chosing to speak in defense of the militia, the truth can be dangerous! Lynchings, racism, rapes, war… this novel deals with seriously taboo subjects, history rears its ugly head.

Then there is the sleazy neighbor Dr. Thomas Mcdow who seduces Dawson and Sarah’s beautiful, young, Swedish governess Hélène. A man with murderous intentions who feels Dawson is interfering in his every plan, threatening to ruin him. Not that I particularly liked Hélène but I imagine being 22 and working as a sort of servant, though maybe higher on the totem pole than the other help, she’d be hungry for love, a husband. Sure, she was lucky to be a part of a respectable, important family but the young still have their fanciful ideas and are ripe for certain worldly wolves. What will it mean for Frank and Sarah?

There is a lot happening in Dawson’s Fall, looking back into your family history can be crushingly heartbreaking but it’s only because you are on the outside and know the end. As in all lives, there are sweet spots despite the tragic curtain fall. For fans of historical fiction, there is quite a bit of the past to chew on, a lot of shame as well. It seems Frank changed with the times and tried to be just, and that says a lot when it’s with great risk you go against popular thought. Morality is a strange beast, there are certain wrongs against nature that no amount of justification can excuse. History isn’t pretty, for one family war took and gave in equal measure but sometimes it is those closer to home that can seal your doom.

Publication Date: May 14, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sarah Crichton Books

Tracing a family from the old world to the new and into the modern era. The shifting between family members and time periods in the beginning of the book was a bit confusing. Overall, solid writing, but the story didn't ever completely capture me.