Howard Bahr's Comments

        
Howard Bahr accepts the 2007 Michael Shaara Prize for
Historical Fiction from Jeff Shaara

     I tell my writing students two things straightway: first: that their every creative act is sacred and binds them with a golden thread to God, who made all things; and second, that their talent-- if they have talent--is a gift, not something born of themselves, but given in stewardship, and theirs only so long as they use it.  I see these things as truth, and by the light of that truth, I believe an artist should always take his work seriously, but never himself.

     At Gettysburg, my great-grandfather, Josiah Watson Hereford, was twenty-three years old, a 2nd Seargent, a file-closer, in the 42nd Virginia Infantry, and in the capacity, he took part in the difficult, and ultimately futile, assault on Culp's Hill.  He was a veteran of all the campaigns of the Army of Northern Virginia, and so I have confidence that in every single moment of that two-day fight on Culp's Hill, he was scared out of his mind and would rather have been doing something else.  But when the command was given, he stepped out with the rest, and--in the absence of evidence to the contrary--I can only believe that he did his duty.  This, I take seriously.

     My three Civil War novels, including The Judas Field, are about men and women faced with the same hardships and terrors as Josiah.  Each of these characters is in a bad place; each struggles to overcome his circumstance with courage and sacrifice and love.  These characters are faced with choices few of us ever have to make, and in their choices, they find redemption.  Their stories, fiction though they are, I take seriously.

     Thus I accept the Shaara Prize with great pride, keenly sensible of the honor it endows--but not on my behalf.  Rather, I belief this prize to be a tribute to the characters in my work, who are real to me, and to the young man, my own blood, who set his face into the terrible darkness, who followed the colors up the rocky slope of that hill yonder, knowing what lay ahead, wishing he were someplace else, but doing his best for all that.  For them, and for him, I am deeply grateful to all.  Thank you.