Toward the end of the Civil War, a small ragtag band of Confederate troops are retreating from an overwhelming number of Yankee soldiers. Ian Campbell, a small bookish soldier, is assigned by his brutish uncle “Sarge,” the troop’s leader, to guard “Herculean” Drew Conrad, a lone Yankee soldier whom Sarge captures. Sarge has a history of capturing handsome young Yankees, torturing and eventually killing them, and that’s what Sarge plans to do with Drew.
For the next 225 pages, Ian recounts Drew’s torture at the hands of Sarge and some of his men, who focus their rage on a helpless foe. Drew is a Christ figure who is viciously whipped, kicked, punched, spit on, peed on, almost starved, bound, left in the elements, and “bucked”–tied naked in the rain around a wheel. Drew’s torture is certainly not ritual bondage with role playing and safe words.
Drawn to Drew, Ian helps him by treating his wounds and providing shelter and food, despite Drew’s impending death. Sarge wants to make a man out of Ian and forces him to participate in the mistreatment. Once before when Ian had been interested in a Yankee prisoner, Sarge strangled that prisoner with his bare hands. At the same time that Ian wants to comfort Drew, Ian realizes that he is sexually aroused by Drew’s being bound and tortured.
The reader has to suspend disbelief that Drew could take so much abuse and yet have enough strength to keep up with the daily marches. Moreover, Ian talks daily about trying to escape, but he keeps postponing any action even as Drew declines in strength.
This is a difficult book to review. Some readers will see the book as an excuse for relating gratuitous violence and sex; others will find the violence too disturbing. I don’t know if a BDSM reader would find the book erotic.
Yet Purgatory is well-written and well-researched. It’s a romance like no other, and in the end the strange but believable romance is what Purgatory is about. Each reader must decide for himself whether he likes the book, but I recommend it to gay males who can accept the sadism that permeates the book.
Reviewer: Larry Romans
Vanderbilt University Library