THE CHAMBERLAINS OF BREWER, by Diana Halderman Loski, Thomas Publications, Gettsyburg, Pa., 1998, 113 pages, $12.

Hollywood has told the thrilling story of how Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Regiment helped win the Battle of Gettysburg. So have television documentaries, printed biographies, even a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Killer Angels.”

So what is there left to say about Brewer’s most storied native son? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Author Diana Halderman Loski, a licensed battlefield guide at Gettsyburg National Military Park and the ancestor of eight Union soldiers, has written an engaging family history of Joshua and his wife, Fannie, his parents, his sister and three brothers.

Drawing on letters, battlefield accounts, newspaper articles and long-lost archival material, Loski paints a portrait of a private family that nonetheless, as she writes, was “surprisingly open among themselves, especially for Victorian times.” And they were “anything but average,” Loski notes. They were witty, intelligent and well-educated.

Joshua, actually named Lawrence Joshua, was born in Brewer in 1828 to Joshua and Sarah Chamberlain. Horace followed in 1834, then came the beautiful Sarah or “Sae” two years later, followed by John (1838) and Tom (1841).

Any one of the siblings, it appears, could have risen to the greatness reserved for Joshua after his daring bayonet charge at Gettysburg and his postwar term as Maine governor. They were a distinguished family, but not without their problems.

Tuberculosis claimed Horace in 1861, as it would later John, a Castine preacher, and Tom, who fought alongside Joshua at Gettysburg.

While her brothers were at war, Sae was ever the stern, but kind, sister back at the family home at 80 Chamberlain St., fretting over Joshua’s war wounds, charting his recovery in a Maryland hospital. Joshua’s life was saved by Thomas, who located two battlefield surgeons to mend his wounds.

Tom was bright and clearly could have rivaled Joshua, whom he admired, but with the war over, he floundered, lacking the fortitude and self-control to succeed in civilian life. He drank to excess. He even married his late brother John’s widow striving to forge a new life, but the union failed.

Despite its title, readers are cautioned that the book is less about Brewer and more a chronicle of the Battles of Fredericksburg and Gettysburg and other engagements where Joshua and Tom fought, and the manner in which the family was shaped as a result of their harrowing experiences.

Numerous family portraits adorn the book, but none of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Another disappointment is the lack of a thorough index.

But on balance, Loski’s book is a good read, full of not only the “what” of history but the “why” and “how” as well. Joshua and his clan, wherever they are, should consider themselves honored.