The Rebel Wife

by Taylor M Polites

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Forced into marriage with a wealthy man after her Southern family is rendered destitute by the Civil War, Augusta becomes a widow a decade later and finds her circumstances hinging on a missing package in a community torn by racial prejudice, violence, and disease.

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I really had high hopes for this book, since it was written by a graduate of the MFA program at Wilkes University, where I would like to go for MY degree. However....if this is a "brilliant debut novel", as one review notes, then I'll eat my hat. The best sentence occurs on the first page: "The humidity hung in the air like wet sheets shimmering in the sunlight."

That was it. The rest of the book is murky, written in an awful subject-verb, subject-verb See Dick Run style that is awkward to the ear and to the mind; and the characters do nothing for me. "Simon had uncovered a nest of snakes...Rachel and Emma were wild with fear. They closed themselves up in the kitchen. It became so hot the bricks seemed to sweat. John helped Simon kill the snakes...." and so forth. "The attic room is so hot. The heat is early this year."

Enough!!

Don't waste your time on this book. I mean it.

kwskultety | Jul 4, 2023 |

Fascinating first person account of a widow after the Civil War living in northern Alabama. I found myself wanting to shake her, but ended up fist pumping her final act in the book. Rarely do I actually feel proud for a fictional character, but Polites made me do it. His intense study of all things reconstruction and southern for this time period are very apparent and extremely well done. Sometimes I find it difficult to read historical fiction or male writers writing female voices, but had no problems with either one with this book. (

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amandanan | Jun 6, 2020 |

I must get one thing off my chest at the outset. Once again, I find myself very frustrated by how women were treated in the past. In our present times, when a woman's husband dies, she has rights. In most cases, she is the executor of her husband's estate and is usually the beneficiary of the life insurance and/or will. Of course, there are cases where a will may be in probate or a man may not leave anything to his wife (mostly in some cases of wealthy marriages), but for the most part, a woman has the right to her husband's possessions and/or money upon his death without having to worry about a family member (or other person) bullying in on her territory. Not so in ages past and nowhere is this fact more apparent than in The Rebel Wife. Augusta's husband, Eli, has died and she was under the impression that they were a well-off, well-settled family. Not according to her cousin, Judge. But she is getting conflicting stories from him and Eli's trusted and loyal servant as to the truth about the money. And Judge's treatment of Augusta, his literally taking over everything and treating her like she has no rights, is beyond infuriating. Mr. Polites does an excellent job of portraying exactly the situation that would have occurred back then and, although infuriating, it is the reality of the way things were.

Read the rest of my review at my blog: http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/2012/02/book-tour-book-review-rebel-wife-b... (

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TheTrueBookAddict | Mar 22, 2020 |

Terrible. I picked this up because I thought it was a romance (it wasn't) but that's not the reason I disliked this short book.

The writing was good enough, but the dialogue was awful! Taylor Polites has obviously never read Toni Morrison... I'm no history buff, but there were so many little historical inaccuracies.... (

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bookishblond | Oct 24, 2018 |

No.

Don't read it.

Don't do it.

You will never get those hours back.

I love historical fiction, especially set in the Civil War era. And when I saw this book compared to Gone With the Wind, I was sold. Except this book is nothing like GWtW, save for a few minor similarities like time frame. I loathed pretty much every character in this book; they were all so cardboard. I especially hated the narrator, which never bodes well. It took a heroic effort to finish this book, and I rather wish I hadn't! (

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schatzi | May 1, 2016 |

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Canonical title

The Rebel Wife

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

2012-02-07

People/Characters

Augusta Sedlaw Branson

Important places

Important events

Reconstruction Era of the United States (1865 | 1877)

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Epigraph

Dedication

To Kaylie Jones, mentor and friend

First words

I know that Eli is dying. Rachel said the rattlesnakes were a bad sign, but that doesn't signify.

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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

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▾Book descriptions

Forced into marriage with a wealthy man after her Southern family is rendered destitute by the Civil War, Augusta becomes a widow a decade later and finds her circumstances hinging on a missing package in a community torn by racial prejudice, violence, and disease.

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Brimming with atmosphere and edgy suspense, The Rebel Wife presents a young widow trying to survive in the violent world of Reconstruction Alabama, where the old gentility masks a continuing war fueled by hatred, treachery, and still-powerful secrets.

Augusta Branson was born into antebellum Southern nobility during a time of wealth and prosperity, but now all that is gone, and she is left standing in the ashes of a broken civilization. When her scalawag husband dies suddenly of a mysterious blood plague, she must fend for herself and her young son. Slowly she begins to wake to the reality of her new life: her social standing is stained by her marriage; she is alone and unprotected in a community that is being destroyed by racial prejudice and violence; the fortune she thought she would inherit does not exist; and the deadly blood fever is spreading fast. Nothing is as she believed, everyone she knows is hiding something, and Augusta needs someone to trust. Somehow she must find the truth amid her own illusions about the past and the courage to cross the boundaries of hate, so strong, dangerous, and very close to home. Using the Southern Gothic tradition to explode literary archetypes like the chivalrous Southern gentleman, the good mammy, and the defenseless Southern belle, The Rebel Wife shatters the myths that still cling to the antebellum South and creates an unforgettable heroine for our time.

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