The Widow of the South. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.The Widow of the South

Reminiscent of Cold Mountain and Enemy Women, this is a gripping novel based on the incredible true story of a woman whose life was changed forever by the Civil War.In 1894 Carrie McGavock is an old woman, an old woman who has only her former slave to keep her company...along with the almost 1,500 soldiers buried in her backyard. Years ago, rather than let someone plow over the field where these young men had been buried, Carrie dug them up and buried them in her own personal cemetery. Now, as she walks the rows of the dead, an old soldier appears. It is the man she met that day of the battle that changed everything. The man who came to her house as a wounded soldier and left with her heart. He asks if the cemetery has room for one more.Flash back 30 years to the morning of the Battle of Franklin, a battle that was the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War, with 9,200 casualties that fateful day. Carrie+s home-Carnton Plantation-was taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a hospital; four generals died on her porch, and the pile of amputated limbs reached the second story window. And one soldier came to her house and reawakened in Carrie feelings she thought long dead. Zacharaiah Cashwell was a 32-year-old soldier who had lived a hardscrabble life. When Cashwell, wounded, was brought to her home, Carrie found herself inexplicably drawn to him despite boundaries of class and decorum. The story that ensues between Carrie and Cashwell is just as unforgettable as the battle from which it is drawn.n Carrie McGavock was famous throughout the country as the -Widow of the South+ and the -Keeper of the Dead.+ She spent over 40 years tending the graves of the soldiers and corresponding with their families. Up until now, her story has never been written.n Civil War history buffs will be drawn in by the true-life history that Hicks talks about in the special author+s note section that includes photographs of the real life characters.n The book will be exquisitly packaged with endpapers, interior photographs, and rough front. n Robert Hicks has been active in the music industry in Nashville for 20 years as both a music publisher and artist manager. The driving force behind the preservation and restoration of the historic Carnton Plantation in Tennessee, he stumbled upon the extraordinary role that Carrie McGavock played in and after the Battle of Franklin. This is his first novel.n Robert Hicks lives in Tennessee.

Hicks's big historical first novel, based on true events in his hometown, follows the saga of Carrie McGavock, a lonely Confederate wife who finds purpose transforming her Tennessee plantation into a hospital and cemetery during the Civil War. Carrie is mourning the death of several of her children, and, in the absence of her husband, has left the care of her house to her capable Creole slave Mariah. Before the 1864 battle of Franklin, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest commandeers her house as a field hospital. In alternating points of view, the battle is recounted by different witnesses, including Union Lt. Nathan Stiles, who watches waves of rebels shot dead, and Confederate Sgt. Zachariah Cashwell, who loses a leg. By the end of the battle, 9,000 soldiers have perished, and thousands of Confederates are buried in a field near the McGavock plantation. Zachariah ends up in Carrie's care at the makeshift hospital, and their rather chaste love forms the emotional pulse of the novel, while Carrie fights to relocate the buried soldiers when her wealthy neighbor threatens to plow up the field after the war. Valiantly, Hicks returns to small, human stories in the midst of an epic catastrophe. Though occasionally overwrought, this impressively researched novel will fascinate aficionados.
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The battle of Franklin, Tenn., on Nov. 30, 1864, was one of the South's greatest disasters: 6,000 casualties; 1,400 dead, including four Confederate generals. Seventy-seven years later, the progress of this battle, more than any other, convinced Winston Churchill that America would eventually help the Allies win World War II. "They even fought each other to the very end," he said.

But what to do with the wounded and the dead in such numbers? The Widow of the South is a novel based on the life of Carrie McGavock, who took on the task of tending the wounded and burying the dead after the battle of Franklin. The McGavock Plantation, called Carnton, was used as a hospital during and after the battle, and Carrie McGavock was expected, like all women at the time, to nurse them. "Now hundreds of men lay about me, maybe thousands. Millions. I saw them clearly, the twisting limbs and the trembling chests, the rolling eyes in every head in every direction . . . and every one of them seemed to beg me for water. Please, ma'am. Please. This was the price of my redemption." Carrie requires redemption from something like perpetual mourning for several dead children, but it's never really clear what's driving her.

Each chapter shifts from one point of view to another: from Carrie to a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell (a marvelous creation) to a Union lieutenant and others. The narrative begins at the moment that Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest arrives at the McGavock plantation to appropriate her home for a hospital. It ends several years after the war, when Carrie disinters and reburies the Confederate dead from the old battlefield. She names and numbers each of them as best she can, in a grim reversal of Adam naming the animals.

Her obsession with the casualties of war seems to reflect a concern not so much with death as with dead bodies. One might expect her interest to evolve into something more: honoring the soldiers' sacrifice, or a commitment to pacifism, or considerations of life after death, or at least Ouija boards and table tappings. But Carrie's concern remains with, well, remains.

I had some quibbles, too: farm boys talking about "lunch" when nobody had "lunch" until about 1910, and Hereford cows didn't arrive in the United States until 1890. But the wounded soldier named Cashwell carries the narrative. He is a worthy descendant of Huckleberry Finn. Cashwell takes to the road again after the war, riding throughout the country despite his wooden leg. He gets into shooting scrapes in railroad camps, takes up preaching (in all novels about the South, there is never a Bible but what it is thumped) and ends up back near the McGavock plantation excavating an Indian mound. Cashwell's language is engaging and believable: "It was something to watch what happened to the country when the railroad came through. I don't mean the country, like the kind of thing you had to swear your allegiance to and vote about and all the rest of it. I mean the country, the place where we all from, at least those of us who didn't have much before the war and didn't have much to show for it after. I don't mind saying that it was a great relief, maybe on all of us to one measure or another, to come through the country to build something for once, and not burning or digging or chopping or shooting."

All the male characters, in fact, are well done. In scene after scene, they grab our attention: when John McGavock, Carrie's husband, visits a conjure-woman; when Gen. Forrest, dark and unstoppable, walks in and takes over Carrie's house; when Cashwell takes up the fallen regimental colors and carries them to the top of the Union breastworks, saying, "I didn't need my pistols anymore, so I flung them to the ground. I didn't say anything; I'm not one for speeches. I just turned and walked toward the bulwarks expecting at any moment to be cut down. I wasn't happy. I was euphoric."

But Carrie McGavock's convoluted internal monologues about why she feels impelled to rescue the wounded and bury the dead halt the narrative in its tracks. Better to stick with Cashwell; he alone is worth the read. I'd follow him anywhere, wooden leg and all.

Reviewed by Paulette Jiles
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Hicks has a head start on most first-time novelists: he’s got a powerful story to work with. Based on real-life Civil War events, the Nashville song-publisher-turned-author presents this tale of platonic love and patriotic gore with an assured storytelling instinct. A few critics take issue with his agenda (Hicks serves on a board attempting to preserve what’s left of the Franklin battlefield), but the San Jose Mercury News feels the "propagandizing mostly doesn’t show." The book is flush with romantic prose and explicit battle scenes; most reviewers prefer the latter to the former. However, there are flaws (distracting subplots, too many points of view, indistinct characters based on both real-life figures and composites) that led to the love-it-or-dislike-it split among the critics.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

*Starred Review* Carrie McGavock witnessed the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee, on a day in 1864 when 9,000 soldiers were slaughtered, the vast majority of them Confederate. Carrie, the central character in this mesmerizing novel, was an actual historical figure. Her farm was close by the scene of the battle, and her house was commandeered as a makeshift hospital. And what Carrie the fictional character does after the battle, the actual Carrie did in real life. When more than 1,000 Confederate bodies buried in a neighboring field were threatened with desecration, she and her husband moved them to their own land and organized the only private Confederate cemetery. The brewing of the battle, its events, and the wound-healing time afterward are told by Hicks not only from Carrie's perspective but also from the points of view of Mariah, Carrie's slave-turned-friend; Carrie's plantation-owning husband; Union and Confederate soldiers and officers; and Carrie's neighbors. The author gracefully yet forcefully enters the psychology of these various individuals, each one representing a certain side in not only the battle at hand but also in the overarching context of nation rending. And, almost strangely yet certainly beautifully, from all this carnage emerges a love story that transcends time. See the adjacent Read-alikes column for other novels about the Civil War that use the multiple-perspectives device. Brad Hooper
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