Action at Aquila, published in 1938 is an historical novel, and a semi-romance, taking place in and around the Shenandoah Valley during the last months of the American Civil War. Allen was a well-known author in his day, and I guess is mostly remembered today as the author of Anthony Adverse. Colonel Nathaniel Franklin is a Union Army officer, commander of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. As the story opens, Franklin is on leave from his command. He returns home but is dismayed by the harsh attitudes that have developed against the Confederacy among the uninformed (in Franklin's view) non-combatants, there. So he leaves to undertake a 3-week wandering journey across southern Pennsylvania and then down into Virginia to eventually return to his men as Sheridan finished the job of clearing the last of the Confederate forces from the Shenandoah.

During Franklin's journey, we get some very good natural descriptions of this beautiful part of the U.S. Also, we learn of the experiences of the Pennsylvanians who have recently lived through Lee's invasion on his way to Gettysburg and then the Confederates' retreat after their defeat in that battle. Allen makes clear that, other than their resentment at having their towns and houses burned, the local inhabitants grudge against the Confederates was not slavery but secession. Eventually Franklin gets back to his troop. In the meantime, we have been introduced to several secondary characters. Franklin's relationships with these characters largely informs the narrative, mostly in ways that are predictable but enjoyable. The battle that Franklin is plunged into upon his return (the "action" of the title) is described in horrific detail. The honor of the soldiers on both sides may be romanticized, but war, in the actual event, is certainly not. It is a bloody and mostly futile business.

The reason I refer to the book as a semi-romance is that most of the interactions between character are predictable in ways you would expect from a romance. But the high quality of the physical descriptions of the countryside, and the historical representations of the setting and action, raise the novel significantly above the negative connotations of the "romance" genre. My copy of the book is a first edition hardcover missing its dust jacket. So I had to go online to find a couple of contemporary reviews (Kirkus and the NY Times) to learn that Allen claimed his information about the attitudes and actions of populace he was writing about came from years of research and conversations with people who remembered the times, or their children. Allen was writing roughly 70 years after events, approximate to someone today writing about World War Two.

Despite the somewhat predictable nature of some of the relationships, here, we do come to care about the characters all in all, and the narrative itself is well presented and Allen's writing is very strong. So while this is not at the very highest level of historical novel that contemporary readers might wish for, I did enjoy the book quite a lot. The attitudes expressed by the characters are, similarly, not sentiments we'd wish our protagonists to have, but I do think they are probably accurate to the time. Finally, through Allen himself, we get whispers of how Americans in the 1930s stood on some of these issues, as well. ( )