The Candidate

Joseph Alexander Altsheler was a Kentucky born journalist and novelist who is best remembered today for his historical adventure novels for boys, particularly the Young Trailers series, the French and Indian War series, the Civil War series, and the Texan series. Before he settled into the historical adventure mode that would define his late career, however, Altsheler also wrote a number of contemporary novels and political fiction, of which The Candidate is one.

The Candidate is set in the political world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States, the era of strong party machines, contested presidential nominations, and the kind of backroom dealing that Altsheler had observed firsthand as a journalist for the New York World. The plot follows a candidate for high office, with all of the personal and political pressures that such a campaign brings, and Altsheler uses the framework to engage with questions about reform, corruption, the role of newspapers in shaping public opinion, and the relationship between personal integrity and political effectiveness.

Altsheler had a reporter’s eye for political detail and his prose moves with the kind of brisk pacing that newspaper writing tends to teach. The novel is not a great work of literary fiction by modern standards, but it captures the political culture of its era with more authenticity than many of the more polished political novels of the period managed. The characters are distinct, the dialogue carries real political flavor, and the plot turns on the kind of small but consequential decisions that real political careers actually depended on.

For scholars of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American political fiction, of the wider career of Joseph Alexander Altsheler, or of how journalism informed the popular novels of the era, The Candidate is worth knowing. Modern readers may find the prose dated and the political assumptions of the era foreign in places, but the novel retains real interest as a window into a particular moment in American public life. Many of Altsheler’s books are now in the public domain.