[In the following review, Czerwinski lauds Škvorecký for his scholarship and narrative skills in The Bride of Texas.]

Fortunately, Škvorecký did not attempt to give credit for winning the Civil War to the Czech fighters, who numbered, according to the author's own count, a mere three hundred combatants. But it is a tribute to Škvorecký's great talent that these few men are sketched with such a compassion and love that they seem to belong to the blood-soaked soil they have patriotically pledged to rid of slavery. In their pursuit of freedom and a better life in their newly adopted country, they stumble into the chaos of an American war of emancipation. Unable to comprehend the magnitude of the task before them, they obediently follow orders and strive to stay alive. Their lives are played against the background of a tragic war in which loved ones are pitted against one another. Sometimes they feel like bystanders in a family feud. Ultimately, however, they take part in battle and die, encountering their fate in a country that promised them freedom and opportunity.

Škvorecký employs various literary devices to keep his two parallel stories running smoothly. Lida, the bride of Texas, is a strong-willed heroine, much like Scarlet O'Hara. Recovering from an ill-starred love affair in her native country, she chooses an alliance with a plantation owner's son and thereafter continues “gambling on the wrong card.” Her brother Cyril falls in love with a high-spirited slave woman and, like his sister, suffers defeat in his search for his loved one. The two stories are interrupted by a female writer's four intermezzos. Under the pseudonym of Laura A. Lee, Lorraine Tracy seems a composite of all the American female writers of the nineteenth century. In fact, Škvorecký allows her to present literary arguments that perhaps are his own. These intermezzos seem a bit staged and artificial, especially the final lines of each chapter, which are reminiscent of the cliff-hangers that Dickens and American writers of the last century employed in stories written for publication in monthly periodicals. There is little doubt that Škvorecký was aware of the device and employed it to evoke humor and create the illusion of nineteenth-century America.

That the author has succeeded in painting a remarkably realistic picture of the events surrounding the American Civil War is a tribute to Škvorecký the scholar and prose stylist; that he has created a novel which surpasses the narrative skills of any writer living today is a measure of his artistry. One hopes that the final words of his novel—“Deo gratias”—were meant to encompass not only The Bride of Texas but Škvorecký's eagerly awaited future works as well.