Viewer's review: The Widow Of The South
Val Johnston on Robert Hicks' novel on American Civil War
The Widow Of The South
Robert Hicks
ISBN-13: 978-0552773409
This novel tells the story of an extraordinary woman who lived at the end of the 19th century near a town called Franklin, Tennessee, USA.
Franklin was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. It was in fact the Confederates’ “last hurrah”, the beginning of the end but at a tragic cost – over 9000 deaths and casualties in five hours! Imagine the horror, the stench, the smoke, the noise, the sadness and suffering of that day. Four generals died, bodies piled up to waist high, blood was inches deep on the ground. Colonel F.S.S. Stafford of the 31st Tennessee was actually found dead standing wedged by the corpses.
Carrie McGavock and her husband John owned a plantation called Carnton on the edge of the battlefield. They, their slaves Mariah and Theopolis and their remaining children get caught up tending and burying the dying or dead.
Carrie and her family are in mourning for three dead children, taken a year before the novel begins. She finds her life’s work as well as a new kind of love with soldier Zachariah Cashwell, and a real redemption by caring for the sick and wounded and, when the guns finally stop, by ensuring that all who died on that day have a form of rememberance.
The narrative covers the year of the battle 1864 and continues until 1894. Carrie’s house and cemetery still stand, a monument to all the lives taken that day and to the strength of the families who had to carry on.
Robert Hicks has done an amazing amount of research for this book. He writes with restrained emotion, especially about the wounded and the celibate love affair between Carrie and Zachariah and his powers of description are very fine. It is an astonishing work of blended fiction.
By Val Johnston, Cambridge
Val has also enjoyed reading Asylum by Patrick McGrath and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
