The AMALGAMATION POLKA is the fourth novel from Stephen Wright and
his first in more than 10 years. For someone with relatively paltry
production, Wright has garnered notice and acclaim from the
American literary monsters --- Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Joyce
Carol Oates and Thomas Pynchon all offer back-of-the-jacket blurbs
on his latest book. This attention is well-earned. Wright's voice
and style are not unlike the best of the old black and white
"Twilight Zone" television shows. It's usually creepy, highly
stylized, and you don't always know what's happening, where it's
headed or why. But you know it's good and you don't want it to
end.


Speaking of black and white, THE AMALGAMATION POLKA is set in Civil
War America.  The Fish family from upstate New York are
staunch abolitionists with a twist: Roxana Fish, mother to Liberty
and wife to Thatcher, is the daughter of prominent South Carolina
slaveholders. Growing up on the family plantation, Roxana witnessed
horrible things --- brutal beatings of slaves were the order of the
day --- and she did not understand it. A young woman with a strong
sense of outrage and justice, she was the family's conscience,
lashing out regularly at her parents, siblings and elders in ways
that proper young women from the South just don't do.


While on holiday with her mother in New York's Saratoga Springs,
Roxana meets her fate in the person of Thatcher Fish, the son of a
well-heeled upstate New York family.  Thatcher is a kindred
spirit --- smart, somewhat reckless, and committed to ending
slavery. Roxana runs off secretly with him, they marry and open
their home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, a vast network of
safe houses for slaves on the run from the South.


War is looming. The Fishes reconcile that their only child,
Liberty, will fight for the Union. When the war starts, the story
explodes in a torrent of battlefield violence and malevolence. Some
of these scenes are overwrought. Wright too often infuses them with
a gallows humor that drifts toward madcap farce, diluting the power
and sense of horror from the action on the field. Wounded soldiers
don't always sound like what you expect, although Wright probably
knows better than most, having served in Vietnam.


Wright keeps things moving along nicely, and this novel bears all
the hallmarks that distinguished Wright and his prior novels like
GOING NATIVE --- vivid characters, dialogue that is true to the
time period, and a language-driven prose that reveals a breadth of
talent uncommon among the vast majority of Wright's peers. With
regard to this last virtue, Wright's gift for language is somewhat
astonishing. In GOING NATIVE, he made poetry out of a madman's
cross-country trek that was marked by death and destruction.
Similarly, THE AMALGAMATION POLKA is propelled by the fevered pen
of its author. The plot may lag at times and the humor may be a bit
much, but through the sheer force of its language, the book always
finds a way to grab you.