The War in Words

Apr 08, 07:21 AM

Current Headlines: By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

the associated press

DELAWARE, Ohio - Robert Olmstead always considered his war the Revolutionary War, when he was growing up on a farm in New England.

It was not until he was teaching at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania did the novelist first visit Gettysburg, where he was transfixed by another great American conflict.

He returned countless times - in the middle of the day and at midnight, on his own and paid $25 to ride with battlefield guides while they drove his car and narrated history.

"I just found myself driving down there again and again and again."

Out of that experience and after a decade of research and writing, Olmstead has produced "Coal Black Horse," a Civil War novel generating enormous publicity ahead of its Tuesday publication.

The novel, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, N.C., is a Borders "Original Voices" selection for May and received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which likened it to an austere and poetic fairy tale .

The story, with echoes of "The Red Badge of Courage," tells of a 14-year-old boy ordered by his mother to leave their Virginia farm, find his father in the middle of battle and bring him home.

"You must find him before July," she warns in the ominous opening pages. More than 51,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded at Gettysburg, which raged from July 1-3, 1863.

Early in the book, a stranger gives the boy a black horse for his journey. Olmstead, who rode a headstrong black pony as a child, knew he wanted "that iconic horse" to make the trip with the boy.

"There's just something hard-wired between human beings and horses. Dogs love us, cats disdain us. With horses, it's by agreement."

Olmstead, 53, grew up on a dairy farm in Westmoreland, in southern New Hampshire, where his family has farmed for generations. He's the author of four other warmly received novels, though none were best-sellers.

He studied under short story master Raymond Carver at Syracuse University. During those years, he also taught eighth-grade English, ran a construction business, raised dairy cows and oxen on a small farm and finished his first book, "River Dogs," a short story collection.

Today Olmstead teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, in central Ohio. He lives in a 101-year-old two-story house a few minutes from campus. He rarely drives, preferring to walk or ride his bike.

He wakes up between 4 and 6 a.m. each day, walks downstairs past numerous framed photographs of family and turns on his laptop. He writes almost every day for five or six hours - at his dining room table and then from a large stuffed chair. Three other manuscripts are in the works.

"I finally feel like I know what I'm doing. I sit around going, 'God, how many more books can I get out now that I know what I'm doing?' "

Olmstead discussed his new book sitting at a butcher block kitchen table in sandals, jeans and a black fleece sweatshirt over a black polo shirt.

He has curly, brushed-back, iron-gray hair and blue eyes; he's thoughtful, laughs easily and speaks in a strong voice that tends to trail off and soften as he comes to the end of sentences.

"I've always been writing about boys and their fathers. I just see this channel, this current that runs through everything I write."

His memoir, "Stay Here With Me," recounts life with his father, an alcoholic who died young but nevertheless imbued in Olmstead his love for books, and his grandfather, a fifth-generation dairy farmer who succumbed to cancer.

Olmstead has given up daily newspapers, doesn't watch TV and listens only occasionally to public radio. He subscribes to more than a dozen magazines, from The New Yorker to publications about salt water fishing and cross country skiing.

In the age of e-mail, he's an optimist about in-depth writing - fiction and nonfiction.

"The desire people have to render themselves, to translate themselves onto the page in some way, to arrest time, to capture the ineffable, to document thoughts, lives, experiences - I don't think that's ever been as healthy as it is right now."

Just as important, he adds, is the role writing has played in his life. Though he now does book tours in Germany and attends writing seminars in Russia, he didn't leave New Hampshire until age 18.

"Writing has been my coal black horse. It's allowed me to travel places I never imagined I'd be able to."

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