SOURCE: A review of Theory of War, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXI, No. 4, February 15, 1993, p. 163.

[In the following review, the critic offers a mixed assessment of Theory of War.]

A white slave in post-Civil War America: that's the hook for this semi-autobiographical fiction [Theory of War]. Brady has already written a novel (The Impostor, 1979) and an autobiography (The Unmaking of a Dancer, 1982); here, she reconstructs a life of her grandfather, the slave.

An excerpt from Theory of War

Atlas and I didn't agree about what happened next. Oh, not the facts. It's the heart of the matter, the truth, you might call it. But who can trust Atlas? Doctors spend so much time playing God themselves that they make lousy witnesses when it comes to the heart of things. Atlas wasn't even a very good doctor; he told me himself that he had to pay ten thousand dollars...