Barry Hannah sometimes jokingly referred to Nightwatchmen in third-person as “Barry Hannah’s ‘lost’ novel.” Published by Viking in 1973, it was widely disparaged by critics, sold poorly, and, at the author’s wish, has never been back in print. That the book was a failure isn’t as important, I believe, so much as that it was a necessary failure, one that deserves to be read.

The saying goes, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” but in reference to historical fiction, a better saying would be, “Those who don’t add something new to the past are simply repeating it.”