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The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
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The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

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Loved this book! Very emotional..the story has stuck with me long after reading it. ( )
  Ames3473 | Nov 28, 2009 |
I didn't exactly know what to expect from this book and I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. This is the tale of the little recognized Civil War Battle of Franklin in Tennessee and how it affected the people in the town near the battlefield. It also brings to light the efforts that were made by the townspeople to preserve the cemetery and Carnton home where so many soldiers were taken after the battle.
This book appears to be a tribute to Carrie McGavock and her slave/friend Mariah. These two women of the south worked diligently to care for the wounded and to provide solace to the families of the soldiers who died in the battle.
Carrie McGavock is the normal southern woman, wife and mother. Before the battle, her life is filled with depression and grief related to the death of 3 of her young children. It seems that Carrie doesn't come alive until literally everyone around her is dying. The Confederate Army turns her home into a hospital and together, Carrie and Mariah work to ease the suffering of the survivors. Carrie becomes involved emotionally involved with Zachariah Cashwell, a Confederate sergeant who Carrie sends to the surgeon for a leg amputation. Their time together is cut short when Cashwell is sent to a Union prison. Carrie's spirit turns to protection of the cemetery where the Confederate soldiers are buried and she and her husband John work to have the soldiers reburied on the land when the original cemetery is threatened.
The historical facts are cleverly woven throughout the fictional story, enlightening the reader while enhancing the story. ( )
  cyderry | Nov 7, 2009 |
This was an interesting piece of fiction/non-fiction.I found Carrie very interesting so much so that I looked her up online and found pictures(I listened to this one audio) and information that really made her come to life.
That being said the fictional account of Carrie and Zachariah was well a little hard for me she being a southern belle and propriety and all.I think it would have been just as good of a book if the opening of the hospital and the events from there would have brought her and John close again.Instead of the rift between them continuing even though he supported her moving the soldiers.
Carrie was a strong southern woman who I did enjoy learning about. ( )
1 vote susiesharp | Oct 23, 2009 |
A very moving book about a nearly-forgotten battle to those of us who have very limited knowledge of the details of the Civil War. This pays homage to many of the fallen soldiers of the Confederate Army, both identified and non-identified. Furthermore, it pays tribute to Carrie McGavock who devoted much of her life to preserving the memory of these soldiers. Many of the historical details are based on fact, interwoven with the author's interpretation of Carrie's relationship with these soldiers & with one in particular. As a reader who is largely ignorant of the facts surrounding the Civil War, I found this book very enlightening and it has piqued my interest into further exploration, with an additional desire to travel to some of these historical sites. Having read the abridged audiobook version, I think this is definitely one instance where an unabridged reading would greatly enhance the reader's enjoyment & appreciation of historical detail, & had I read that, my star rating would've probably been higher. ( )
  indygo88 | Oct 14, 2009 |
I’m torn.

Were it not for this book, I would still be in ignorance about the history of the Battle of Franklin and of the Carnton cemetery. We owe a debt of gratitude to this author for bringing the story to the greater attention of readers in this country, and for his work in promoting the physical preservation of the Carnton home and cemetery. I very much appreciate his research into that moment in history and its background. That part of his story was captivating. And, too, the historical notes and photographs at the end of the book were fascinating.

The setting, from the little town of Franklin, Tennessee, to the small farms and large plantations thereabouts, and especially the Carnton homeplace, was very realistically rendered. The place and its time, setting-wise, were believable. (For the main story, the history, and setting - 5 stars.)

But the dialog didn’t ring true. In the characters' thoughts and speech, I couldn’t take to the story.

It felt, at times, as if it was written by a psychologist assigning personality types to his different characters and molding their words to fit his sculptures. At other times, as if a non-Christian was trying to channel to the main character words (and actions) foreign to a woman raised (as his history notes show) in a strong Presbyterian worldview. At times, as if a being from the 21st century was trying to make his characters say what he would have liked them to say from his own enlightened viewpoint, rather than what real people in those situations and from that time in history would actually have said. I don’t know any personal details about the author; nor would such details matter. The dialog just felt forced in those directions. (For this – 2 stars)

Overall, I rate this book 3.5/5 and would recommend it to readers interested in the American Civil War. ( )
3 vote countrylife | Aug 27, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 36 (next | show all)
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Series (with order)
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People/Characters
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Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
for Tom Martin, Jr. - Semper Fidelis
First words
Prologue - 1894: Down the rows of the dead they came. Neat, orderly rows of dead rebel boys who thirty years before had either dropped at the foot of earthen works a mile or so away or died on the floors of the big house overlooking the cemetery.
Book 1 - November 30, 1864: Dawn: That day in 1864 was unseasonably mild for late November.
Epilogue: Had the Battle of Franklin ever really ended?
Author's Note: If God was watching that Indian summer afternoon of November 30, 1864 (and some have argued that He was not, another explanation of events), He would have been looking here: on the continent of North America; in the southeastern section of what had once been and would again be called the United States; in the central part of a state they called Tennessee; between the mountains and the great river; among the burial mounds of an ancient Stone Age culture that had known nothing of firearms and artillery; in the bend of a small river at the convergence of three bright macadam roads, where brilliant streaks of light rose and fell along a gentle undulation of hills washed in the dun and yellow and red of autumn.
Quotations
…the smell of men overpowered me. My nose had no experience with such a smell. It could not parse its elements. The smell was heavy and sour and musty, and I took it to be the smell of that world which had been kept at bay by my house and my husband these many years.”
The newspapers were always on about how the best men of our country – and by that, they meant this new country of ours, these Confederate States of America – went off to fight and were lost forever. But what of the best of our women? How many lovely young women were sacrificed behind the plow in those years? Oh, I’m not saying that a woman oughtn’t guide a plow, although I shudder at the thought of my own incompetence at the reins. It’s not the plowing, you see; it’s the elimination of everything BUT plowing, the possibility that you could be anything BUT someone who walked behind a mule and gathered in the snap beans.
My breathing came harder and my face flushed, as it always did when I began to feel unmoored, or upon the discovery that there was yet another thing under the sun that I had not understood. Or both.
Those men were the chains that bound the living. They were the missing whose absence shackled the survivors in place, people afraid to move on for fear of being gone for their sudden return. They drew the living back to the war, back to that battlefield over and over and over again, reenacting its rituals and its skirmishes until they all would be dead. … They will have to come to Carnton. They’ll be safe there. I will mourn them if no one else will.
Someone had to do it, to be that person. I was the woman they wrote the letters to; this house was the last address of the war. Now it was the final resting place of the dead, or at least almost 1,500 of them, and they could not be left alone. I had resolved to remember so others could forget. In the forgetting, I prayed, would be some relief, some respite from the violence and bitterness and vengeance.
Last words
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Disambiguation notice
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Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0446500127, Hardcover)

In an Author's Note at the end of his book The Widow of the South, Robert Hicks tells us that "when Oscar Wilde made his infamous tour of America in 1882, he told his hosts that his itinerary should include a visit to 'sunny Tennessee to meet the Widow McGavock, the high priestess of the temple of dead boys.'" Carrie McGavock, The Widow of the South, did indeed take it upon herself to grieve the loss of so many young men in the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, which took place on November 30, 1864. Nine thousand men lost their lives that day. She and her husband John eventually re-buried on their own land 1,481 Confederate soldiers killed at Franklin, when the family that owned the land on which the original shallow graves had been dug decided to plow it under and put it into cultivation.

Before the battle begins, Carrie's house is commandeered for a field hospital and all normal life is suspended. Carrie is anything but normal, however. She has buried three children, has two living children she pays little attention to, has turned the running of the house over to her slave, Mariah, and spends her time dressed in black walking around in the dark or lying down lamenting her loss. She is a morbid figure from the outset but becomes less so as the novel progresses. The death going on all around her shakes her out of her torpor, but death is definitely her comfort zone.

One of the soldiers who is treated at the house is Zachariah Cashwell, who loses his leg when Carrie sends him to surgery rather than watch him die. They are inextricably bound in some kind of a spiritual dance from then on. Their reasons for being drawn to each other are inexplicable, apparently, because they remain unexplained, and when Cashwell tells Carrie he loves her, she beats him nearly to death because she loves him too. At least, that is the reason Hicks gives. He violates that first caveat given to all writers: "show us, don't tell us." There is doubtless something deeply flawed in Carrie and screamingly symbolic about her behavior; it is surely elusive. Too bad, because Carrie was a real person whom Hicks lauds for her compassion and ability to grieve without end. Then, he throws in this gratuitous "love story" and confuses the issue. Carrie's relationship with her husband and children remains unexamined. Hicks is better at describing death and "the stink of war" than he is at life. If you read War and Peace and loved all the war parts and were bored senseless by the peace parts, this is your cup of tea. --Valerie Ryan

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:13 -0400)

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