Book Tour with Author Q&A ➱ The Reluctant Patriot: A Novel Based on a True Story of the Civil War in Tennessee by Author Susan Lohafer
In places where loyalties weren’t clearly drawn, the Civil War created a different kind of pressure—one that settled into daily life and made even small choices feel uncertain. In The Reluctant Patriot, Susan Lohafer follows a man trying to hold onto stability as that pressure builds around him.
Harrison Self believes that staying out of the war is the best way to protect his family and preserve his way of life. As a farmer, his priorities are rooted in the routines of his land and the security of his home.
That sense of distance begins to erode when his son becomes involved in a Unionist conspiracy to burn Confederate railroad bridges. The consequences are immediate, drawing suspicion and legal attention that disrupt the life Harry has tried to maintain.
Arrested and accused of treason, he is forced into a system of military courts where outcomes are shaped by testimony, perception, and shifting loyalties. In a world where alliances are uncertain and trust is fragile, he must confront the limits of neutrality and the reality that even standing still can have consequences.
Chapter 1
The Conspiracy
Greeneville, Tennessee
November 8, 1861
As he stepped carefully among the saddled horses, Harry could hear them moving their hobbled weight in the gloom. Their warm breath clouded the November chill. Here and there, he stroked a muscled neck, lifting the nap of coarse hair. In the dark, he was wary of their stamping hooves. “Pay me no mind,” he whispered. Time was short, and yet he slowed in their midst, feeling their inner heat, their careless strength, their indifference to the road they traveled. They were as tolerant of him as if he’d once had four legs.
Peering up into the heavens, he lost his gaze in the liquid dark, hoping to catch God’s eye. All he saw was the paleness above the tree line. All he knew was what he’d learned in half a century. Must be about nine, he judged, as if he’d heard nature’s clock chime. Then the pain flooded back, gushing through his veins and pooling in his stomach. How much simpler it would be if his toes were mashed to pulp. His heart on a spit wouldn’t satisfy Corniah if he failed to bring their son back.
Harry crossed the patch of swept earth and mounted the single stair. He leaned into the solid wood he’d helped Jake saw and plane and settle into place on hinges strong enough to stop a bull. The planks gave an inch, then resisted, heaving with the crowd on the other side.
Harrison Self firmed his jaw. This was his brother-in-law’s house, where, on any other day, he could enter without knocking. From his own front door, it was only a mile’s walk, though tonight he’d forced Castor to a gallop that surprised them both. Nor had he expected what followed. To be standing on this doorstep, fighting to gain a toehold, was like milking a wooden cow. If you had sense, you lost interest.
But he couldn’t give up. They had his son in there, he was sure of it, and there was no going home without Hugh. When an opening appeared, he lodged his foot in the crack. They would not keep him out, no, they would not, though earlier in the day he’d refused to be one of them, said it was none of his affair. “Only a fool lights a match in his own barn,” he’d said, thinking he had clinched the argument.
Yet his son had trailed after them, so here was Harry, come to pull the child back, lest he burn himself.
No one’s fault, then, but Hugh’s, that his father looked ridiculous as he fought with the stubborn door, though no one saw him but the waiting horses. It was a sizable herd, and he reckoned most of the able-bodied men of Greeneville must be visiting the Harmons.
One thing he knew: their dirty boots would be breaking his sister’s heart, fouling the boards she scrubbed every day, in case the Deity dropped by. Sometimes he smiled at her housewifely care, but tonight he shared her outrage. They’d be making a mess in there, words pouring out regardless of consequences. He’d have kept his distance, but here he was, pounding on the door. How his fingers ached for Hugh’s collar. Let him but get a hand on the boy. First he’d hold the truant close—a foretaste of the moment pierced him—then he’d grab Hugh by the belt, hoist him in a circled arm, and haul him back to sanity.
Susan Lohafer is the author of The Reluctant Patriot, a historical novel based on true events from the Civil War in East Tennessee.
A graduate of Harvard University (B.A., magna cum laude), Stanford University (M.A. in Creative Writing), and New York University (Ph.D. in American Literature), she spent her academic career at the University of Iowa, where she specialized in short fiction theory and narrative structure.
Her previous books include Coming to Terms with the Short Story and Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, and Culture in the Short Story, as well as the co-edited volume Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Her shorter works have appeared in publications such as The Southern Review, and a 2011 essay was on the ‘Notable’ list in The Best American Essays.
She lives in Tennessee.
Visit Susan at her website.
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Author Q&A:
What’s a detail, theme, or clue in your book that most readers might miss on the first read but you secretly hope someone notices?
On p. 190, Andy explains how he escaped from captivity while in transit to another prison. After losing himself in a crowd, he was helped on his way by Lincoln-loving slaves, among whom was a child in a “red stocking cap.” Andy, of course, doesn’t know who the child is, but readers, I hope, will recognize Joshua, the narrator of Chapter 5, with his distinctive Zouave cap. His cameo reappearance advances the untold story of his growing awareness of his agency as a human being and his stake in the Civil War.
When did this story or idea “click” into place for you—was there a single moment you knew you had to write it?
A few years after I moved to East Tennessee, I happened to be leafing through some books on local history. I already knew that this part of the state had been loyal to the Union, even after Tennessee joined the Confederacy. As a transplanted Northerner, I was drawn to this anomaly. When I chanced upon the case of an ordinary citizen who was caught in the war unwillingly and sentenced to death for treason, I knew I held a thread that would lead me to the heart of a fascinating story.
Which character or real-life person surprised you the most while writing this book, and why?
Ask people about W. G. Brownlow, the famous pastor, editor, and first governor of Tennessee after the Civil War, and they’ll probably tell you, yes, he was charismatic, but also bumptious, mud-slinging, didactic, and vengeful. As I got to know him better, however, I learned he was other things, too: generous, warm-hearted, courageous, and faithful (in his way) to the dignity of the common man. I loved the challenge of portraying this controversial figure.
If your book had a soundtrack, what three pieces of music would be on it and what scenes or moments would they pair with?
- Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (finale), heightening the drama of the bridge-burning frenzy, p. 28.
- Jay Ungar’s “Ashokan Farewell” (Ken Burns’ documentary), marking the transition between the Prologue and Chapter 1, pp. 3f.
- Dvořák’s New World Symphony (the part adapted by William Arms Fisher as “Goin’ Home”), underscoring Andy’s dying vision of the escape to Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, pp.196f.
What’s one belief, question, or emotional truth you hope readers carry with them long after they finish your book?
I hope that, years after meeting Harry and sharing his inner life, readers will remember that patriotism isn’t an easy or automatic feeling. It’s a learned understanding, sometimes at great cost, of your identity’s debt to your country’s past, present, and future.
Tell us about a moment during the writing process when the story (or message) took an unexpected turn.
This book began, many years ago, as a work of nonfiction about a Civil War incident. Some of the earlier chapters were shopped around to agents, but no one was interested. I had to admit it: I’d lost interest myself. In the kind of writing that exhilarated me, in the short stories I’d published in the past, the subject wasn’t separate from the artistry that rendered it. At heart, I was a fiction-writer. I wanted to tell a story that was faithful to the record yet open to the imagination. And so I began writing an historical novel about a reluctant patriot.
If your protagonist (or central figure) could give the reader one piece of advice, what would it be?
One of the many things Harry lost during the war was his confidence that he had a handle on life’s challenges, so he wouldn’t have been quick to give advice. If pressed, however, and given that his greatest sorrow was not his own suffering at the hands of the Confederacy but the death of his son, I think he would have said, Listen for what your children aren’t saying to you.
What real-world place, object, or memory helped shape a key element in your book?
In 1861, Lick Creek was a minor stream crossed by a major bridge. Over it, the railroad carried the resources of the Deep South to the generals of the Confederacy. When I visited the spot in a quiet corner of rural Tennessee, there was no trace of the railroad that was sabotaged by local Unionists. The long grass was still there, and the low-hanging branches, and the clear brown water above a velvety streambed. Later, I populated that scene with stamping horses and low-voiced men, stirring up the fallen leaves and muddying the water as they stealthily neared the bridge they would soon destroy, along with their innocence as noncombatants.
What’s something you had to research, learn, or experience to write this book that genuinely surprised you?
When researching the Tennessee State Guard (often disparaged as Governor Brownlow’s “private army,” used to harass his enemies), I was surprised–and moved–to learn that some of these soldiers were assigned to protect Black voters on their first Election Day after emancipation. I’d thought that suffrage, like other rights, could be granted by fiat, but it only came into being through the choices men made when it came under threat.
If your book were invited to join a shelf with three other titles, which ones would make you happiest—and what would that shelf say about your story?
I’d be thrilled to see my book on a shelf with Geraldine Brooks’ March (2005), Allen C. Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), and Charles Frazier’s Varina (2018). Being in such company would say not only that my book is set during the 1860s, but that–politics and generalship aside–books about war should always come down to the sufferings endured and the meaning found (or lost) by those experiencing it firsthand.
A father. A son. A war that turns neighbor against neighbor. He thought staying neutral would keep his family safe. He was wrong. #thereluctantpatriot #susanlohafer #historicalreads #civilwarreads #historicalfictionlover #authorinterview #authormarketingexperts
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