LitStack is excited to share Allie Coker’s review, an engaging exploration of the characters, key elements, and the impact of Nell Joslin’s storytelling in Measure of Devotion. Expect to walk away with a fresh perspective on what it truly means to be devoted to someone or something you cherish.
In This LitStack Review of Measure of Devotion
Measuring an Outcome | Love, War, and Letting Go in Nell Joslin’s Measure of Devotion
Measuring an Outcome
The concept that one grows used to something or can grow into loving another is upended in the novel Measure of Devotion as we follow the Shelburne family. From Susannah and Jacob’s marriage when they were 15 and 40 respectively, to their son, Francis’s, upbringing, we see the Shelburnes strain and chafe against one another even while seeking signs of affection within their small family. It is painful and realistic to witness, but Joslin’s precise prose captures the economy of every motion and through simile she skillfully plays with light and nature throughout the novel while portraying something truly unnatural—war.
October 1863— It is two years into the Civil War, and young Francis Shelburne has been severely wounded during a nighttime raid on the Union near Lookout Mountain in TN. Back home in SC, his worried mother receives a telegram from Francis relaying the news and asking for her to send Jacob and a doctor. Unbeknownst to Francis, Jacob is languishing on his deathbed, so Susannah must be the one to retrieve her injured son.
Jacob is kind to Susannah in his goodbyes, soothing her fears that the bad blood she exchanged with Francis before he left has been forgotten. She worries too that the doctors will saw off Francis’s leg due to the hip wound before she can reach him. Due to the 25-year age gap and difference in personalities, Susannah has routinely refused Jacob physically over the years from lack of romantic attraction, yielding Francis as their only child, so Jacob eventually withdrew emotionally from both her and their son. Still, they are both grateful for the life they’ve shared and afforded one another.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Susannah was the daughter of a widowed pastor who didn’t believe in slavery. She would have had limited marriage options due to her mother being part Native American at a time when indigenous peoples and people of color were considered less than human. Jacob came from a slave-owning family but started questioning the ethics of owning another person during his Harvard education. After coming to his own conclusions, Jacob gave freedom papers to his manservant, Hawk, who had been “gifted” to Jacob and sent to accompany him at school. Hawk stays in his employ for wages as does Letty, a woman who works for the Shelburnes and with whom Susannah feels kinship.
Letty has always had a knack for getting through to Susannah, even during their worst conflicts. But Susannah must learn that theirs will never feel like a partnership of equals to Letty so long as Letty works for the Shelburnes. She tries to tell Letty to call relatives should Jacob pass while she is away fetching Francis so that Letty and Hawk won’t be found on the homestead by themselves by neighbors who are pro-slavery and potentially dangerous, but Letty reminds Susannah that both she and Hawk have freedom papers and can just leave at their own will.
Their son, Francis, does not share his parents’ views or values. Francis continues to pine for his father, Jacob’s, attention only to feel smothered by the doting love of his mother, Susannah, whose only wish is to keep him safe. Raised to believe the opposite of the Confederacy, Francis is hellbent on volunteering on that side of the war just because his friends are. All of Joslin’s characters in Measure of Devotion pay an extremely high price to learn that loving a cause or a person does not mean you will be loved in return.
Francis, who once loved to draw and was good with horses, became a feckless drunken teenager who stole and was lazy in school but had plenty of friends. His past has chased him into his current state which won’t abate much to the desperation and consternation of all who know him. Still, Susannah does not treat him like a lost cause, indeed, almost no such thing exists in this narrative. Joslin examines the depths of the human heart, both the ugly bits and tender ones intermingling, through the dynamics of her characters.
The Wounded and the Watchful
Francis, who cares not a whit for his mother or her welfare, mourns the fact that the Union mules and horses died (not the humans) due to the Confederates starving the Union troops—that’s how much he hates his opposition. Meanwhile, Susannah, who has spent her whole life trying to grow her patience and tame her anger goes to any extreme necessary to protect, heal, and bring home her son—even when it means risking harm to herself, a mother’s love in action.
Francis is not the only one whose bitter hatred or indifference seems to be his calling card. While traveling to meet Francis where he lays wounded in a cabin outpost, Susannah encounters a captain who makes his stance on the black and “red” man known. Even as a white woman, she feels greatly underestimated throughout Measure of Devotion.
When she reaches her destination, Major White explains how dangerous it is for Susannah and Francis to stay on given how close they are to enemy lines. She opts to stay in his room and tend him anyway. Francis, expecting his father and having longed for a male role model since he was a young child, feels repulsed by Susannah’s presence and smothered by her care growing up but he is in a dismal state physically and she uses the knowledge Letty taught her to bandage, clean, and care for Francis’s wounds with the assistance of Major White’s teenage slave, Shadrach, and Sergeant Claude Spofford who is not much older than Francis himself.
The Major makes it abundantly clear that there will be no special treatment for Susannah or her son (indeed he is already privileged not to be laying out dying in a field hospital somewhere) and that if she causes trouble, they will be sent away to find new quarters. This does not stop Susannah from conversing with green-eyed Shadrach and offering to join rations.
Like a drumbeat nearing, the fighting encroaches on the cabin (only two miles out) and Francis and Susannah wake one day to find everyone has fled and now it is only them. Slowly though, the injured and dying start filling the yard and cabin as the soldiers from Lookout Mountain fighting stumble across it. The Union takes the cabin, rendering Claude, Francis, and Susannah POWs. With no privacy and Union soldiers occupying the same space, Susannah fears for her welfare. Dr. Matthias Andreas appears after Susannah suffers an injury of her own and slowly the path to how the Shelburnes will find their way out of this situation starts to unfold.
Held Captive
Joslin alternates chapters between the past and present to great effect in Measure of Devotion, exposing her readers to the daily horrors and facets of life during wartime. Needing to stop on the train tracks to forage for fuel from the woods surrounding the train, the talk of her fellow passengers who speak harsh realities of gory war injuries with no frills or fuss and commiserate amongst each other, the merciless nature of humans making enemies.
Measure of Devotion is very much a book about the nightmares of parenting, war, heartbreak, and slavery, but it is also a book about gumption, persistence, forgiveness, and acceptance. I appreciate Measure of Devotion for a plethora of reasons. It is a story where apples do not equal trees, where characters don’t pull punches, and do what must be done. The idea Joslin weaves throughout–that your actions do not have to be predicated or determined by how others treat you–is the most powerful and complex aspect of Measure of Devotion. With each new challenge faced by the characters, you become more invested until the novel’s crescendo leaves you breathless.
~Allie Coker
About Nell Joslin, Author of Measure of Devotion
Nell Joslin is a fiction writer with deep roots in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she was born and currently lives. She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University and brings a wealth of experience to her writing, having worked as a public school teacher, journalist, and attorney.
You can connect with Nell Joslin at Regal House Publishing, and on Instagram.
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
ISBN: 9781646036127
Pub Date: May 20, 2025
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