Customer Reviews

High Hearts

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a shocking book. The toll of the our most bloody war has never been so real. The descriptions of the battles and aftermath made me want to put the book down and yet never put it down. It made me want to read more about the war.

All of Rita Mae's characters are real, with their fears and flaws. Even though the central charater is Geneva, the depth of each character and their role in the dynamics of the politics of the time is brought forth. There is no minor character in this tale. Everyone, as in the war, has a story and a purpose. WONDERFUL.

Not only breaking out of the stereotype that cast her as only being able to write lesbian novels, but also showing her mettle as a historical researcher, Brown, delivers a story with a twist -- war loving female and her poetry loving husband who is in but can't stand war. A good behind-the-battle-lines (Southern battle lines) civil war book that nonetheless escapes the usual one-side bias of American writers. The ending is a bit too convenient though.

This author has proven in many of her books that she will know her subject well before writing about it. The book shows the horrors of the War Between the States from a different viewpoint: a newly married woman whose husband tries to help his southern community in one of this country's worst moments. Ms. Brown's research into the lives of the different people that constituted a southern plantation, gives the reader a new perspective on the relationships between owners, slaves, overseers and the other participants in southern life. Lest this review seem too focused on the educational view of High Hearts, the book is thoroughly enjoyable as a story and easy reading. Rita Mae Brown at her superb best.

This book is beautifully written, thrilling, entertaining and heart warming. Set during the Civil war, it is filled with love, honor, courage and fine horsemanship. The characters are people you want to know more about. It brings the reader into the unbelievable horrors of the Civil War as the characters find our what they are made of and what is important in life. This book is both romantic and exciting as well as filled with philosophic treasures. It is one of the few books I have read twice!

High Hearts is a captivating book about the Civil War. It takes place in Albermarle, Virginia in 1861. It is about a young woman named Geneva Chatfield who lately marries Nash Hart. Only a few days after there marriage he goes off to fight on the Confederate side. Geneva decides to cut her hair and become a soldier so that she can be with Nash. This book is about courage and true love. It is also about finding your true self. I reccomend this book because it makes you understand that the war caused an immense amount of grief to both sides.

There were uncounted women who cut their hair, lowered their voices and took up arms on both sides of The Civil War. Rita Mae Brown does a wonderful job crafting a fictional story using this truth as her premise. The characters are richly drawn (I actually preferred the evolution of Geneva's mother, Lutie, to Geneva herself), and the story layered and interesting.

Geneva can't bear to be away from her husband when he enlists as soon as the guns fire on Fort Sumter. She joins him as a soldier, and learns some unpleasant truths about him and about war. She finds that she has a talent for fighting and that she and her husband aren't as compatible as they might have been had they not rejected their "traditional" roles.

Rita Mae Brown's interesting Foreword and endnotes provide context and explanation for her literary choices, and greatly enrich the experience. I give this book four stars instead of five because at the end, there are several characters whose final stories are only alluded to, as in, "this happened, but that's a story for another day." I wanted to know what happened for these folks, and this abrupt ending felt like laziness, as if Miss Brown just didn't feel like writing any further. Unfortunate, as it left a bad taste after the novel had been so interesting up to that point.

Well, I read "Rubyfruit Jungle" and loved it, and rated it "5 stars". Now I've read another Rita Mae Brown book, and it's even better, so I suppose it goes without saying that it's also a five star effort.

"Rubyfruit Jungle" was five stars purely on the basis of a fascinating main character; the plot was nothing to get excited about, and the supporting cast was mediocre. This book, while it does not have a character as marvellous as Molly Bolt, (sorry, Geneva) nonetheless is strongly character-driven; it has a dozen characters more interesting and memorable than the second-best character in "Rubyfruit Jungle". More, it has a significantly more interesting plot, and just as much to say about life and how to live it.

A must-read for anyone who has enjoyed anything written by Rita Mae Brown, anyone who enjoys stories about strong female characters, and anyone who enjoys historical novels set during the civil war.

I feel a little bad in looking back over my Amazon reviews - of the relatively few of them I've written, I've seemingly spent a disproportionate amount of time trashing RMB's books. This book reminded me that there was a reason I started reading her in the first place - I thought Rubyfruit Jungle was great when I read it back in college, and I did like the early Sneaky Pie books, even though the talking, crime-solving animal conceit wore thin after a few times. I never did read any of the foxhunting books because after the Sneaky Pie ones I was thoroughly sick of reading about just how superior the horsey "first families" of Virginia are to the rest of us lowly mortals and impoverished non-horse-owners.

I was a little reluctant to read this because of its author, but once I started I forgot all about my RMB resentment, and by the end I was in a mood to forgive. I just loved this book. I think one reason I loved it so much is because of its perspective of a woman who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Civil War - I am a reenactor, and I play a male soldier, albeit an infantryman rather than a wealthy cavalryman. (We make fun of the cav snobs, as the real infantry did 150 years ago, and probably for a lot of the same reasons.) I wasn't entirely in love with the Mary Sue-ish Geneva, but I did relate to her conflicting feelings and especially to the way she actually felt more at home in a male role than in the traditional female role of the time, even though it caused conflict with what - and who - she thought she wanted and loved. I also really liked Lutie, especially as she overcame her "proper" upbringing and frustrations with her place in society, and rose above it to serve as a nurse - I particularly liked it after the war when she:::::SPOILER ALERT:::::

married someone who could have been seen as far below her station

::::::END SPOILER ALERT:::::

and ended up far happier than she'd been as a wealthy plantation owner prewar.

I only had one teeny-tiny fact checker quibble, I always seem to have these with RMB books (if you need a new researcher/fact checker, Rita, I have experience, excellent references, and am currently available, not that you are reading reviews of books you wrote over 20 years ago, nor would you want to hire someone who's trashed your previous work). Geneva is supposed to have been absent from her regiment between mid-August and mid-November of 1862, yet she mentions seeing a wounded soldier at Sharpsburg. That battle, also known as Antietam, took place in September of 1862. Anyway, there, I said it, I'm over it. Apart from that one sentence, I flat-out loved the rest of the book.

If you're the kind of Civil War buff that loves exacting detail, you're not going to like this book. If you're the kind of reader who enjoys reading different perspectives on the war, set against a good read, this is a book you will love. I fell somewhere in the middle.

This is the story of a family of Southern women caught up in the Civil War in Virginia. It centers around Geneva, the headstrong daughter who flees to fight alongside her brand-new husband because she can't bear to be away from him. Her mother is swept up in the need for nurses, along with the two favorite slaves, Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy. Geneva fights well and loves soldiering, but pays the price for being a better soldier than her husband. Lutie, her mother, finds a purpose in ministering to the needs of soldiers. The slaves support them in the efforts, while moving towards the freedom they see coming.

My major gripe with this book is with Brown's sometimes odd writing style. The love scene in the beginning of the book is the most un-romantic sex scene I've ever read, thanks to the clinical terms she uses. It felt like she didn't really know how to write the love scene and felt out of place with the story, almost to the point that I hoped they wouldn't make love often. I also took exception with her method of describing horses. At one point, she describes a horse as a 16.2 hand horse, and another she says a horse has "a touch of Connemara." If you aren't a "horse person" you won't really understand the implications of the phrases. Even if you do know something about horses, it doesn't really work, and took a step back from the story.

However, that said, the book is pretty good. These are characters with heart. The women give insightful quotes about the nature of war that stopped and made me think. I really liked Lutie; the progression of her character through the book was wonderful. I thought the men in the story nicely complimented the women, even in the heart-breaking moments. The ending, while predictable, is acceptable.

Overall, while this book doesn't answer any hard questions, it was a nice book, and I'm glad that I got the chance to read it. I enjoy Brown's writing, and have several books on my to-be-read-pile.

High Hearts is an admirable introduction to war and its effects on the men and women involved whether on the home front or on the battlefront. It's a treasure because it contains viewpoints of many different characters and lots of information in a very readable work of historical fiction that does not shy away from horrors of war. Having been to Richmond before, I will be more intrigued than ever with the role it played in the Civil War and in the various locations mentioned in the book. Chimborazo has always been a favorite place to visit; this book examines the critical nursing and support role of women in the "shadow army." I have recently decided to give up reading the Sneaky Pie Brown series; I'm so glad that didn't keep me from reading this earlier work of Rita Mae Brown. It's a can't-wait-to-but-hate-to finish book.