Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks' evocative, viscerally powerful new novel, is ostensibly about the life of radical abolitionist John Brown, a deeply religious man whose relentless fight against slavery—beginning as a link in the Underground Railroad and culminating in a bloody insurrection at Harper's Ferry, Virginia—helped incite the Civil War. But as rich and believable a portrait as Banks draws of this mythical figure, his book is really an attempt to reveal the foundations of a country still torn by moral conflicts, racial disharmony, and extraordinary violence. The story is told from the perspective of Brown's third son, Owen; this device not only grants the author the tremendous narrative freedom to go outside the historical record, but also captures the isolation of a man so dominated by his father's grand vision that he sacrifices his own identity. In this way, Cloudsplitter resembles Banks' Affliction, also about a weak-willed son who denies and finally succumbs to his father's brutal influence. While the Browns' mini-militia is safely couched in the righteousness of the Bible—a source of both spiritual guidance and tactical strategy—and the vision of leaders like Douglass, Emerson, and Thoreau, the tormented Owen discovers to his horror that he believes in nothing but killing itself. In modest but often eloquent language, Banks connects "like beads on a string" the steady accumulation of events leading to the Civil War and beyond, with modern-day resonances from Rodney King to Waco. Like all historical fiction, Cloudsplitter may draw fire for placing dramatic effect over facts, but its perceptive, convincing attention to the motivations of John Brown and his followers exceeds the limitations of straight biography.