Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Widow of The South

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Widow of The South

Robert Hicks was born and raised in South Florida. In 1974 he moved to Tennessee where he now lives in an eighteenth-century log cabin near Leiper's Fork.  His day job is music publishing and artist management but his passion is collecting - including 18th century maps of Tennessee, Tennesseana in general and Southern decorative arts.   He was the driving force behind, and co-curator of, the Art of Tennessee exhibition in Nashville which opened in September 2003 and has served on the boards of a number of historic preservation groups in Tennessee, including Franklin's Charge - a campaign to preserve the remaining undeveloped fragment of the battlefield at Franklin.  He says that he hoped writing The Widow of The South would keep Franklin's history — and that of Carrie McGavock — from fading, and that it would ensure that tourists came to Franklin, supporting the mansion through the largely untapped vein of heritage tourism in Williamson County.  

Did you know? One of the many historical figures to play a role in The Widow of the South is Nathan Forrest - a millionaire slave trader and plantation owner who enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private at the start of the Civil War and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a brigadier general in 1862.  After the war it is believed that he helped establish the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Grand Wizard in 1867.  

Must See Link: The Widow of the South website with photos of Carrie McGavock, her house, maps of the battlefield etc.

Other Links:
More about Robert Hicks at BookBrowse.  
More about Carrie McGavock and the Battle of Franklin.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Widow of The South. It originally ran in November 2005 and has been updated for the September 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.