IN THE HANDS OF PROVIDENCE: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War, by Alice Rains Trulock, University of North Carolina Press, 569 pages, $34.95.

“The Civil War is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history. Without too much wrenching, it may, in fact, be American history.” — Robert Penn Warren

I had the good fortune as a young boy to grow up in Brewer. In the late 1950s, the prospering city, always in Bangor’s shadow for one reason or another, stood tall in its honoring of her favorite son, Joshua Lawrence Chamber- lain.

As an elementary school student at the Washington Street School, I was Among the proud natives of Brewer that November day in 1959, and saluted the Civil War hero, governor, and president of Bowdoin College, as we dedicated what we would always call the “new bridge” to the late Gen. Chamberlain.

We were proud that day, for although the bridge served as an important link to our sister city, Bangor, it was Brewer who could claim Chamberlain and his lofty accomplishments as her own.

No finer account of Chamberlain’s life and his heroic deeds and Civil War exploits has been penned than the recently published “In The Hands of Providence — Joshua L. Chamberlain and The American Civil War,” written by the recently deceased Alice Rains Trulock.

The University of North Carolina Press has certainly offered the world a detailed, lavish account of the career of a man who unobtrusively made his mark on a coastal town, a state, and a nation.

Chamberlain was literate, brave, and charismatic. He was a teacher, a soldier, and a leader extraordinaire, who has strangely slipped through the fingers of hundreds of historians, who have chosen isolated deeds as sources of inspiration for biography over a life that represented longevity of achievement and consistency of leadership at all levels.

Historian Richard Sherman wrote that “except for serious students of the Civil War, few Americans outside his native state know his (Chamberlain’s) name or celebrate his memory.”

Perhaps the answer to that mystery lies in the fact that Chamberlain was content to operate outside of the limelight, in the trenches, if you will, with the ultimate goal of victory for the cause, whether literary or otherwise, always his chief concern.

Trulock’s account is passionate in its portrayal of the man as homespun and heroic. As a professor and president of Bowdoin College, his students always came before his own recognition. As soldier, he would sleep with his troops on the same rubber blankets, under the stars, never allowing valuable rest and recreation time for his men to be wasted on building him a special shelter, under any conditions.

As husband and father, he protected, at all costs, the sanctity of hearth and home by keeping his private life as private as possible for such a public figure, often refusing sojourns with his wife while on active duty.

And as governor, he combined the qualities of leadership and compassion that had endeared him to the hundreds of men in his command of the proud 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment during his Civil War years.

The legitimacy of Trulock’s account is enhanced by her use of Chamberlain’s own words in the monumental days of his life, most notably the Civil War years.

The book emerges as alluringly autobiographical in nature, for it is Chamberlain himself who often speaks to readers of his landmark days of leadership.

Of Lincoln he wrote: “We could see the deep sadness … and feel the burden of heart … thinking of his great commission to save the people.”

On the central issue of slavery, he penned: “The fathers of the Republic found slavery … a system repugnant to justice and freedom.”

And yet, despite his sensitivity and compassion for others, and the Associated emotional traumas of risking life and seeing others lose theirs, the war and its leadership role “made me less complaisant — will break upon the notion that certain persons are the natural authorities over me.”

And so a hero was born.

But Trulock takes us deeper into the heart of a divided nation as well as she does into the heart of the lion that was Chamberlain.

Readers will taste the stale, weekly rations of the soldiers’ hardtack. They will be nauseated at the smell of rotting bodies in blue and gray, grossly clumped in sickening contrast on the grassy green hillsides of the Gettsyburg battlefield.

“In The Hands of Providence” is an important book, offering new material on Chamberlain and the Civil War, through letters, diaries, and photographs from Chamberlain’s own family.

It is history. It is literature. But importantly, it is fresh drama for hoards of readers and historians alike.

Ron Brown is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.