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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2005, 432 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2006, 448 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket:
In 1894 Carrie McGavock is an old woman
who has only her former slave to keep her
company…and the almost 1,500 soldiers buried
in her backyard. Years before, rather than
let someone plow over the field where these
young men had been buried, Carrie dug them
up and reburied 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 on the 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.
Comment: Hicks' first novel blends
historical fact with fiction. The story
centers on Carrie McGavock, known as 'the
widow of the south' - a Confederate woman
whose house was commandeered as a field
hospital following the Battle of
Franklin (fought in November 1864 close to
Nashville, Tennessee) - one of the bloodiest
battles of the war with 9,200 casualties,
mostly Confederate soldiers. The novel
opens 30 years after the battle and then
flashes back to the day of the battle - a
day when four generals lay dead on Carrie's
back porch, the pile of amputated limbs rose
as tall as the smoke house, and a wounded
soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrived who
would shake Carrie out of her stupor
allowing her to find new purpose in her
life.
The story is told from alternating points of
view, including Mariah, Carrie's
slave-turned friend; Carrie's husband, who
returns to his plantation after the war;
various soldiers from both sides; Carrie's
neighbors; and Confederate general, Nathan
Forrest. This allows Hicks to write about
the small human stories from various points
of view, as well as the epic catastrophe of
the Civil War itself. In the words of
Kirkus Reviews, this first novel is "worthy
of a place alongside The Killer Angels
(Michael Shaara), Rifles for Watie
(Harold Keith) and Shiloh
(James Reasoner)."
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in November 2005, and has been updated for the
September 2006 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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