Lydia Schoch

Title: The Last of What I Am

Author: Abigail Cutter

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Publication Date: September 19, 2023

Genres: Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 363 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A haunting and beautifully written novel about a Confederate soldier whose own personal war follows him into the afterlife—until one fateful day when his encounters with a modern-day couple change everything.
A ghost in his deserted childhood home in Virginia, Tom Smiley can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, nor can he shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early twenty-first century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced not only to face his own terrible secret but also to come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in the house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both.

Content Warning: War, racism, slavery, death, and a prison camp. I will only mention the latter in my review.

Review:

Forgiveness is a process.

The settings was well developed. I could easily imagine what each scene looked like, including moments that described things that I’ve never personally experienced like being in a prison camp. It was especially helpful to have detailed descriptions of things like food or clothing as they were both quite different from what the average person in North America would expect to have access to today. These moments helped this world come alive in my imagination as I waited to find out whether Tom would ever forgive himself for the role he played in the Civil War.

I struggled with the changes in tone and theme.  It started off as a ghost story but soon veered firmly into the historical fiction genre as Tom described what it was like for a sheltered young man who didn’t really know what he was getting into to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War. While knowing his background information was important for understanding why his spirit remained on Earth after death, so much space was spent on this topic that the blurb felt misleading to me as a reader. Readers who enjoy realistic historical fiction about war may be a great match for these chapters, but they never quite felt like they matched the tone of the first few chapters for me due to the drastic shift between the life of a moody ghost and the horrors he experienced as a young soldier when he was alive. I wanted to love this book, but this was an impediment for me to dive deeply into Tom’s life because of the many differences between the blurb and the text itself.

What I did find interesting about this book was it exploration of racism, intentions, and regret. Tom genuinely believed he was doing a good deed by signing up to fight for reasons that other readers should discover for themselves, but having good intentions doesn’t mean that a decision is justifiable. He was affected by the time and place he lived in, and I was intrigued by his character development as he realized what a colossal mistake he had made and how even someone who tries to do the right thing can still be veered off course through unconscious bias and a dangerous amount of ignorance on a subject. This is something every single of us can be fooled by, and it’s well worth reading and talking about

The Last of What I Am is a good pick for anyone who likes historical fiction that has some paranormal themes.