Reflections on Guerilla Season
By Michael Bouman
April 9, 2007
Guerilla Season by Pat Hugues is about the friendship of two 15-year-old boys who live in a dangerous time and place. Matt and his friend Jesse are almost old enough to become fighters in the Civil War. The story is also about the way that love blossoms between Matt and Jesse's sister, Susie. And it is about the adults who are neighbors on three farms somewhere near Liberty, Missouri in 1863. And it is about missing your father.
I was absorbed by this story all the way. I have been a brother, a friend, and a parent; and I have been fifteen. I remember moments of my fifteenth year as if they happened yesterday. I also remember what it was like to find the balance of rules and freedom when my own son was fifteen. I brought all of that experience to this wonderfully-told story of Matt Howard's coming-of-age.
Guerilla
Season is about identity. Matt thinks he is Southern because
his late father came from Kentucky. He thinks his mother is Nothern
because she came from Pennsylvania. His mother, however, has insisted
on their family's neutrality. Their nearest neighbor sides with the
Union. Further up the road, Jesse's family is "Secesh."
In that time and place, boys of 15 are old enough to slaughter animals, to manage farms, and to be hunted as possible combatants. Suspicion and fear color everyday life. Night riders may be Federals disguised as Quantrill's men, or they may be the raiders themselves. If they demand to know which side you're on, what do you say?
I admired the way Pat Hughes differentiates the children, teens, and adults. I sense her complete life experience has been poured into these characters. The teens are are portrayed as people with life-and-death choices and responsibilities. The character development of Matt's mother is especially poignant, and it rings so true! She must discover how to lead her family as if there will be no safe choices and no second chances.
For Matt, the sense of devotion to his father's heritage looms over him like Destiny. He wonders if the family's neutrality is a betrayal of his father's memory. He wonders what loyalties are due the neighbors, regardless of their politics. He wonders what risks are the dues of true friendship.
These are not juvenile matters. In this book we see the anguish of our Civil War brought home to one small neighborhood on the prairie. More than once, Matt is in a position to bring a terrible fate on his family or the family of his friend. He must find his way to the justice of each situation and each relationship as Fate closes in on them all.
I thought of Plato's Republic as I read this story, so after I finished Guerilla Season, I reached for the translation by Richard Sterling and William Scott. After the quick page-turning of Guerilla Season, Plato required a strolling pace. If you try to hurry through a scene of Plato, you can easily miss the flow of an idea or the nuances of humor.
Anyway, The Republic begins as a friendly, sociable conversation about what makes life worthwhile, and almost instantly, Socrates asks what people mean when they talk about "justice." And one of the men says that he believes a just man is one who benefits friends and injures enemies.
Plato puts this notion of justice at the beginning of his book because it represents a commonplace notion that he thinks is dead wrong. This same commonplace notion of justice is the starting point, also, for Matt Howard's conversations with Jesse. Both Matt and Jesse are just months away from turning sixteen. The looming question in Matt's life is, "will I honor my father by farming or fighting?" Jesse already knows what he will do. He will wear the guerilla shirt his mother is sewing for him and he will ride with Quantrill. Matt must search for his own answer. At each station of his harrowing journey, Matt must acknowledge and follow the prompting of his heart. Events force him to come of age ahead of time.
I use the term follow his heart with some reservation. A contemporary word might be center. Matt has to listen to and trust the guidance from his center. Another image, from The Republic as well as from the biblical heritage, is light. There is a source of "light" that is not of our making, but which is ours to own and see by.
Jesse is a bible-reading lad, more so than Matt. Jesse suggests readings that he hopes will help Matt see the present difficulties in the proper light. Matt has a religious crisis when he attends a church service at a Union church and hears the Battle Hymn of the Republic. One of his choices is made right there: he will have to tell his mother that he will never again set foot in a church that condemns the heritage of his father.
This is probably the smallest of Matt's realizations of what he must do with himself. In this neighborhood of farms, the lives of family and neighbors hang under a terrible sword. Matt's age makes him especially vulnerable. During his journey through peril, Matt finds and follows his light. He moves toward an idea of justice that belongs at the end of The Republic. Guerilla Season, after all, is a book about moral complexity.
The final scenes of the book include a farewell, lit by campfire, inside a cave. I am not sure that Pat Hughes had Plato's cave in mind when she placed Matt and Jesse in there. I certainly didn't make that connection until just now. Isn't it funny, the way books seem to communicate across centuries and cultures?
Guerilla Season closes on the prairie at the break of dawn. One friend speeds away on a horse, waving good-bye as the other walks home in the other direction. I had to imagine which one of the friends was moving toward light, and which one moving away.