Russell Banks won readers’ hearts in 1991 with “The Sweet Hereafter”. He tackled painful subject matter and populated his story with a cast of damaged, thorny characters. He wrapped it all with a troubling conclusion that somehow had a perverse sense of redemption.

A reader might be predisposed on the basis of that fine accomplishment to assume that only Russell Banks could take on the towering figure of real-life abolitionist John Brown and take him beyond history textbook admirable, and make the firebrand radical both understandable and even sympathetic. Unfortunately, “Cloudsplitter” is told from the reluctant and spiritually browbeaten perspective of Brown’s son Owen, and the result is ponderous and lugubrious. The good that John Brown so determinedly strives for is powerfully overshadowed by his sanctimony, radicalism and religious fanaticism. The reader is left feeling as battered as the narrator, if the reader can even struggle to the end of this overly long tome.