Susan Rivers (1)

My first reaction upon finishing The Second Mrs Hockaday was stunned silence immediately followed by a powerful sense of loss. Placidia’s story so entranced me that it took me several hours to mourn the fact that I had finished it. The silence came about because her story was so powerful it swept me into her world and made me forget my own. It has been a long time since any novel has made me feel this way.

Susan Rivers’ second novel is the epitome of exemplary use of the epistolary show more literary format and stellar writing. Through the use of personal correspondence, diary entries, and legal documents, Ms. Rivers not only tells Placidia’s tragic story but recreates the South at the end of the Civil War with vivid clarity. Each document has a distinct voice that adds to the story as much as their words do. Other than the inquest documents, the letters are so natural and honest that it is all too easy to get sucked into reading just one more letter, and one more, and yet one more. The Second Mrs Hockaday is the perfect example of an unputdownable novel. show less

Decently researched as far as battles, clothes, foods, chores and interesting if unnecessarily complicated.
The main character is an extremely romanticized view of a southern white woman who participated in the chattel slave trade. In fact was born and raised and married in it but seems to hold no prejudiced views towards her 'servants'.
When a white author is too fragile to accurately label chattel slaves they should take that as a clue and choose a new subject.
Benevolent chattel slave owners show more only exist in the imagination of racist white folks. Every single person who participated in any aspect of the chattel slave trade was a bad person who's character is irredeemably scarred. The main character is not realistic to her time and class but is sanitized so modern audiences can sympathize with her.
I don't.
I don't care about her or her husband's pain. It is just that they suffered and I sincerely hope their existence was forever haunted.
None of the black characters are developed or have story lines outside of their usefulness to the main white characters.
I've read a fair bit of non fiction about southern women before and during the Civil War; black free, enslaved and white chattel slave oppressing, none of the views expressed or behaviors match the diaries or letters written at that time. Mrs Hockaday does not feel like her contemporaries and her differences are never explained.
White women left on plantations and farms with enslaved peoples had very negative and fearful views of those enslaved peoples the longer the war carried out. They were very angry with them for leaving, fearful of their desire for freedom and many white women took it very personally. Also they were terrified of armed black union troops. As white slave 'owners' felt entitled enough to black folks labor to steal it for centuries, why would the Civil War and it's trials change that?
We all know it did not.
Miscegenation is invented as a word and becomes illegal in 1864. Post Civil War the KKK is created. If southern whites suddenly realized their 'slaves' were people, why did we have and continue to have racial segregation and lynching? Both attest to southern white anxiety resulting in terrorist behaviors carried out on fellow citizens.
This narrative is just grossly apologist in nature. show less

Extraordinary.

This was the first of two books I coincidentally read in recent months which described the horrors of the Southern homefront during the Civil War. Here the horrors were more tangential, dealt with more matter-of-factly, never the main focus of the story but a backdrop for the central question of what happened to the Second Mrs. Hockaday, and yet those horrors were just as successfully conveyed as horrors here as in that other book, where they were more closely detailed. It's show more for damn sure that when the Doctor finally lands in my living room and asks me when and where I want to go, my answer may be "anywhere but the Confederate States of America anytime in the late 1800's".

But that is not the main point of the narrative. That would be too easy. What it actually is is the slow and gradual unraveling of a terrible secret– the sort of mystery that you're warned against trying to unravel, because it will change you forever. The first Mrs. Hockaday, the second Mrs. Hockaday, slave and master, infant and adult, death and life – all are tangled and entwined into a knot of pain … and a little surprising joy.

I thought of Gryffth's mouth on my neck, his laughter shaking the bed. Can one die of loneliness, I asked myself? I thought I heard the first Mrs. Hockaday's voice in my head, saying: I did.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. show less

First, I LOVE the name Placidia. It stands on its own as a signal, a beacon of a different time, and it almost evokes a sense of place. Fascinating too, is that this book is based on true events. I admire Rivers' ability to track this story given the construct. (I think my head would have exploded) She takes care with each character's role, and as I read, I imagined a stage where each one spoke their part, giving hints and details on what they knew about the dramatic event that captivated show more and horrified all who knew - or thought they knew - Placidia's story.

One of the most commendable aspects of the narrative is the way Susan Rivers has captured the essence of voices from the past. I have a couple of Civil War diaries and she has written this book (in epistolary form) with the unique lilt and cadence of language at that time. It makes me wonder - if in one hundred and fifty years, we can sound so different, what will our language be one hundred years plus from now?

Another is the tension she creates as the reader gleans a tiny bit more knowledge of the facts with each letter written, each diary entry, and each inquest. Even while a reader might begin to suspect that the accusations ARE suspect, Rivers confidently, and capably delivers the conclusion at exactly the right time.

Highly recommend for those who like reading books set during the Civil War, and written in epistolary form. show less