Michael White, a Pushcart nominee for his short fiction, has written four previous novels, each one featuring compelling characters caught in unexpected plot twists spawned by the vagaries of human nature. His latest focuses on Augustus Cain, a veteran of the Mexican-American War who makes a hardscrabble living catching runaway slaves and returning them to their owners—a "soul catcher" in slave terminology. Cain is good at what he does, but doesn't particularly enjoy it; in fact "he'd had his belly full of the whole stinking business." But he is forced to make "one last hunt" when he loses all his money and his beloved horse in a poker game to Mr. Eberly, a Virginia tobacco farmer who is missing two slaves, Henry and Rosetta, and will write off Cain's debts upon their return.

The scene is thus set for the captivating and enlightening Soul Catcher—a pre-Civil War historical saga that quickly becomes a page-turner. Cain, inwardly a sensitive soul who reads Milton in his spare moments, is accompanied on his odyssey by a threesome of misfits: the Strofe brothers, one slow, the other brutish, and Preacher, an "independent contractor" whom Cain perceives as "coarse and foul-mouthed, illiterate as a stump." This disparate group follows the slaves' path north from Richmond and eventually to John Brown's settlement in North Elba, New York. They sneak Henry away by eluding Brown and his men, and next it's on to Boston, where Rosetta has found a "safe house," and Cain finally understands why Eberly is so intent on getting his "wench" back. She's a beauty, newly pregnant and determined not to return her baby to slavery. Her sad story of Eberly's sexual abuse of both her and her mother somehow shocks even the worldly Cain; from that point on his journey becomes not just one of monetary necessity, but a problematic moral dilemma.

With Soul Catcher, White has penned a historical adventure, a romance, a perceptive commentary on slavery's ills and a thoughtful character study—all wrapped up in this highly recommended novel.

Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado. Copyright 2007 BookPage Reviews.

Augustus Cain is a Mexican War (1846–48) veteran with a dark vocation: he catches runaway slaves and returns them to their owners for monetary reward. But "soul catching" has turned him into a rough gambler and alcoholic; he wants to clear his debts and make one last run up north before heading west to forget his troubled life and begin anew. His final job is to find two slaves who ran from a sinister plantation owner in Virginia. However, when he finds one of them, Rosetta, in Boston, he realizes that this mystical young woman can change his life forever. In a sweeping novel spanning the tumultuous time in American history between the Mexican and Civil wars, Cain crosses paths with legendary abolitionist John Brown, locates the Underground Railroad, and encounters other slave catchers as well as con men who could jeopardize his future. White has created a complicated and deeply scarred protagonist looking for salvation in a dark vision of human bondage, suffering, and deeply rooted changes that will split the nation into civil war. Very convincing and well wrought; suitable for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/07.]—Ron Samul, New London, CT

White's latest novel (after 2004's The Garden of Martyrs ), a sweeping if often predictable saga of Antebellum societal and political tensions, follows Augustus Cain, a down on his luck gambler, wounded Mexican-American War veteran and notorious fugitive slave catcher. After a run of bad luck, Cain accepts an assignment from Mr. Eberly, a wealthy Virginia landowner that Cain's in debt to, to track down two runaway slaves, Henry and Rosetta. Along with three of Eberly's men, Cain sets out on a dangerous journey that takes him from Richmond to New York and Boston. After Cain captures the runaways and turns homeward, the trek becomes a means of redemption for both the "soul catcher" and his captives, and paints an unsettling portrait of a nation on the brink of civil war. Intercut with the journey are vivid flashbacks of the battle that left Cain crippled. Despite an abundance of stock cameos (a traveling salesman/con artist, wise elderly people who dispense easy advice) and a predictable conclusion, the book succeeds in presenting a fractious era and a host of moral quagmires. Cain—a flawed and coarse antihero—becomes emblematic of a historical moment under White's sure hand. (Sept.)