Reviewed by Jon Michael Miller for Readers' Favorite

Letters to Whitman: A Short Story by Margo Laurie is a moving, brilliantly conceived short piece imaginatively composed of a Union soldier’s Civil War letters from hospitals and battlefields to Walt Whitman. The letters are written by one Private Nat Gwynnett who hypothetically meets Whitman when the latter is visiting sick and wounded soldiers, Gwynnett among them, at D.C.’s Armory Square Hospital. In truth, the great poet served as a volunteer offering wounded soldiers uplifting encouragement as well as gifts and treats. Impressed by Whitman’s status as a popular poet of the time, Private Gwynnett located a copy of Leaves of Grass from a marauded home and began writing letters that included, among fascinating details of military goings-on, critiques and questions of the bard’s artistic work. There is even an actual meetup of the two men at a battlefield location. Gwynnett, from Upstate New York, writes from the prime conflict sites of Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg and provides some of the grim details of a soldier’s life during that period.

So realistic are these twelve funny, grim, insightful letters from Private Gwynnett to Walt Whitman that I did not realize these are the creative products of Margo Laurie’s imagination—supported by meticulously researched and documented details—until the explanation at the end. As a reviewer, I was conflicted about revealing this truth until I realized (duh!) that by Laurie’s referring to the piece as a “short story,” the truth of the matter should have been obvious from the start. My error, however, in thinking they were actual letters, allowed me the immediacy of historical fact. The grimness of the battle details was greatly alleviated by Gwynnett’s critiques of Whitman’s poetry such as the soldier’s puzzlement about what, exactly, are the “leaves” of the grass, and especially his angst at the poet’s reference to death as “lucky.” Private Gwynnett’s imagined writings reveal the soldier’s own poetic powers. Margo Laurie’s Letters to Whitman is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the Civil War or Walt Whitman, or in both, which she exquisitely intertwines.