Customer Reviews

The Widow of the South

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This novel's premise intrigued me because I live close to Franklin, Tennessee, and have learned a good deal about the Battle of Franklin in recent years. McGavock is a well-known name around Nashville, which added to my interest. I eagerly picked this book up and dived in, prepared to meet the main characters and learn more about the battle and its aftermath, and previous reviews made the book that much more appealing. However, as I read, I found myself disappointed in the actual retelling of the battle itself; I was hoping for more action and deeper characterizations. The plot meanders between points of view and Carrie McGavock's motivations are particularly difficult to understand. On a personal level, I could delve into her darkness of depression over the loss of her children, but since it was a common occurrence in the mid 1800s, I found it a bit over-the-top. Her feelings for Zachariah are not in character and are never believable. Mariah is a strong character who never achieves her own voice and a few of the side stories seem forced as well. The novel finally achieves its goals in the last 100 pages as the focus for Carrie becomes clear and her determination shows. Hicks has a wonderful way with words but he needs to show the why of his characters rather than letting them stew in their own juices for much of the story. Overall this is a good book, but not as compelling as I'd hoped.

The `Widow of the South' will bring Carrie McGavock's story to people who have never heard of this remarkable person. As a young, high spirited woman, she sat for a portrait wearing black, certainly not the done thing at the time. Ironically, black becomes the color of her life. She knows firsthand the loss of three beloved children and treats all the dead boys from the battle that raged outside her home as if they were her own.

One of the most touching parts of the book is the true story about a Georgia family who traveled to Tennessee to bring their dead son home from Carrie's cemetery. After seeing how she lovingly cared for him, they decided to leave him in Tennessee returning only to bring Georgia dirt from their farm for his resting place.

One read of this book is not enough.

It is November 30th, 1864, and Carrie McGavick's Franklin, Tennessee plantation home is in a terrible spot. The Confederates and Unionists are about to have a major battle engagement only a mile from Mrs. McGavick's house, and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest has commandeered her home as a field hospital.

Mrs. McGavick - later to become known as THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH - is in mourning over the death of three of her children during a typhoid epidemic. And she spends most of her time in bed letting Mariah, a Creole slave, run the household. But the days of mourning her children come to an abrupt end as she must come to grips with the death of 9,000 soldiers in a single day, and care for the wounded whom blanket every square inch of her floors.

One of the injured is a tough and vocal man named Zachariah Cashwell, a Confederate nobody. During the day's bloodshed, Mr. Cashwell did an incredibly brave, heroic, stupid, and suicidal thing: After the color-bearer is killed, he picks up the flag and marches toward the enemy as they shoot at him. But he doesn't receive a scratch. Only after being captured and attempting to escape is he given a near mortal wound from a gunshot. Then he's taken to Mrs. McGavick's field hospital to recover or die. Here the two (McGavick and Cashwell) meet and clash ...and eventually fall in love, even after Mr. Cashwell's leg is amputated. Even though Carrie McGavick is married.

What follows is a denying of love, a race to save the graves of those who are buried outside of the McGavick home, and a woman who discovers her purpose in life: to honor the memory of those "boys" who died that day.

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This is Mr. Hicks' first novel and, luckily, he's chosen to write a historical fiction story. He must have poured over tons of information and had great difficulty deciding what to place in the book and what not to. Thankfully, he's chosen to write about the actual battle. And his prose during these scenes is topnotch; he can describe bloodshed and waste and near insanity and giving up and hanging on, in one graceful paragraph.

Where Mr. Hicks has fallen down is plotting. Although this story sheds light on a little known Civil War battle that incurred horrendous losses, it didn't seem to have a point. The love story between Mr. Cashwell and Mrs. McGavick (which takes up a large portion of the book) is never explored or explained. Why did they fall in love in the first place? We don't know.

The story seemed to meander between the battle, the hospital, Mrs. McGavick, Mr. Cashwell, General Forrest, and two other lovers whom we only see fleetingly. I mean, I felt kind of lost, as if I were wondering around a story with no aid from the author.

But even so, this book will likely be held in high regard by historical enthusiasts as more light is shed upon THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH.

In 1991, after nine years in the Marine Corps, I settled in Franklin, Tennesee, the setting for Widow of the South. I had the privilege of meeting the man to whom Robert Hicks dedicated his novel, Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and Williamson County resident, Tom Martin, Jr. Mr. Martin was wounded in combat and confined to a wheelchair. Despite his condition, he looked surprisingly fit. Sad to say, like so many before and since, Mr. Martin died an untimely death just a few years ago. I've visited the Carter House, and the museum there, along with the Carnton cemetary with its 1481 Confederate graves. Mr. Hicks is a talented writer. Toward the end of his narrative, he makes rather obvious but important references to remembering the thousands who fell (on both sides). The battlefield in Franklin is notorious for its LACK of preservation. By bringing the story of the battle and Carrie McGavock to life, he does a great service to us, the living. I found the narratives of Sgt. Cashwell to be particularly well written and moving. Surely many who made that fateful charge on November 30, 1864 knew they were going to die. Sgt. Cashwell ruminates about facing death and overcomes his fear by embracing it. Over 9,000 Americans died in five hours, most in the first forty minutes. Carrie McGavock honored the dead by caring for their earthly remains. We should thank her and Robert Hicks for reminding us that it is our solemn obligation to do likewise. It has been predicted that this novel will bring more visitors to the battlefield and to Carnton. I know I will be going back--with a deeper and richer appreciation for what transpired in those five tragic hours. Widow of the South is an important book about important events.

I don't understand the positive reviews for this book. The criticisms of the characterizations that are noted in some of the other reviews I can only echo - even given the historical distance between us and these folks, the main characters here simply aren't plausible. The historical inaccuracies are striking as well. There weren't 9,000 soldiers killed at the Battle of Franklin - about 2,000 Confederates were killed outright, and fewer than 500 Union soldiers. There were a total of 5-6,000 wounded on both sides. And there are 1,400 Confederates buried in the McGavock's private cemetery, not "thousands." Other errors are scattered throughout the book. The battle, nevertheless, is important because it was a major catastrophe for the Confederates disguised (briefly) as a tactical victory.

If you are interested in reading a vastly superior fictionalized account of the Battle of Franklin and its immediate aftermath, I highly recommend "The Black Flower" by Howard Bahr. His characterizations are consistent with the times, his facts are right, and the story is gripping. I've been reading Civil War history and fiction for 50 years and, particularly with its description of the fate of the wounded in Civil War conflicts, "The Black Flower" is the most emotionally riveting (and devastating) work I have found yet.

This is a beautiful and extremely well written story. It is about real people who behave like real people. I particularly appreciated the relationship between Carrie and John McGavock. Theirs is a long term marriage which survived, not a fairy tale. The marriage had its ups and downs as do all. But "lust in ones heart" is benign. John appears as a man, not a typical fictional husband and that is refreshing.

The build-up to the battle, particularly that going on in the minds of the soldiers, is believable and thought provoking. For those of us who have never been in the military, it suggests how men (and today women) can anticipate such a horrendous situation.

I loved "The Widow of the South!"

THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH is Robert Hicks's debut novel, but this beautiful, moving book is written with the style of a seasoned author.

First of all, I have to admit I've never been a big fan of Civil War history. But I saw an interview with the author on TV and I was fascinated by the story behind the book. Hicks wrote it to bring attention to his cause, which is to preserve Tennessee's historic battlefields from being turned into parking lots and condominiums. Hicks claimed he didn't know how to write, and the book took him seven years. It's fiction, but based on the life of a real person and a real battle.

Carrie McGavock was the mistress of the Carnton estate in Franklin, Tenn. One terrible day, a battle came to her backyard - literally. "Many consider the battle to be the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War," says Hicks. About 6,000 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded that day, and many of the wounded were taken to McGavock's house, which was turned into a Confederate field hospital. According to Hicks, a visitor to the house today can still see blood stains in the wooden floor. Carrie McGavock made herself the "keeper" of the dead soldiers, deciding to give her own land for their burial and to maintain the cemetery in their honor.

The powerful images are vivid. Who would have thought someone could write about the utter carnage of the Civil War using such lyrical language? For example, after the battle, when the guns and cannons have shot up everything, including the cotton in the fields, Hicks describes the white, fluffy tufts of cotton settling like snow on the bodies of the dead. "It was horrible and lovely and unexpected."

Hicks includes many sensitive, thoughtful passages about death and war. He brings eyewitness immediacy to the work by sometimes writing in the first person, giving us the thoughts of a soldier going into battle, facing almost certain death. And he prints a letter from a man who lost his son in that battle. Its anti-war message applies even today: "My son, my loving and beautiful son, was sacrificed upon the altar of your insanity and your evil. I loved him, but I will not commemorate his actions, or the actions of any of those other boys, any more than I would celebrate a suicide. I've given you your sacrifice, ask no more of me."

You can really immerse yourself in the story. This excellent book should win every award out there.

"The Widow of the South" presents the fictionalized little-known story of Carrie McGavock, a young Southern matron who devoted her life to the wounded and dead after the Civil War Battle of Franklin, Tennessee brought the war to her doorstep. A hithertofore sheltered Southern wife, still grieving the loss of three of her five children, Carrie rose to the occasion when her house was commandeered as a field hospital by General Nathan Bedford Forrest, putting aside her grief and depression to nurse the wounded and eventually to rebury the dead on her own plantation, (The dead from the battle had been buried on a neighboring plantation and were in danger of being plowed under by the owner), stand guard over the cemetery and the memories of the men buried there, and communicate with and attempt to comfort their families. In a sense, the needs of the dead and wounded as well as a chaste romance with a war-maimed man from Arkansas, brought Carrie out of a paralyzing depression and constant meditation on death and loss to a realization of the value of life. The Author's Note at the back of the book further fleshes out the story, giving a short history of Carrie, her husband John, and their plantation, Carnton (now the McGavock Confederate Cemetery) with pictures of the McGavocks, their three lost children, Carrie's friend and companion Mariah who had been given to her as a slave when they were girls, and the cemetery. Mr. Hicks also provides an extensive bibliography for further research into the factual core of the story. An engrossing addition to Civil War literature, unromanticized, but spellbinding. As for the explanation of the love story which another reviewer questioned, it is the heart of the novel. Each completes the other. Through the emotional connection to Sergeant Zachariah Cashwell, a man so different in background from hers, the sheltered gentlewoman Carrie is reawakened to a desire for life and a love that brings her out of herself. The emotional bond with Zachariah is dear to her for the very impossibility of its fulfillment. It gives her back her heart, which until she sensed Cashwell's strong will to live, so different from her disinterest in life, and his unspoken but strong love for her, had been, so to speak, in the grave. In Carrie's recognition of him as a person with something to offer, Zachariah, a man from an impoverished and uneducated background, found a desire to be better than he had been before, to reach for his nobler self, to be worthy of the love of Carrie.

As a longtime Civil War buff, I really wanted to like this novel. But it left me cold, for the same reason that infects most "literary" fiction today -- meaning, it's a story about weird characters doing weird things for weird reasons. As portrayed in this book, Carrie McGavock has already made a fetish of mourning before the Civil War ever came to Carnton; she spends her days drifting in a laudanum-induced haze, lamenting the deaths of three of her children while ignoring the ones who remain. Inevitably, the world crashes in when Union and Confederate forces clash in the bloody Battle of Franklin, leaving thousands of dead and wounded on her doorstep. Hicks' descriptions of the battle and the eternal scars it leaves on the town are some of the strongest scenes in the novel.

Carrie comes out of her haze to care for the wounded, and takes an interest in one soldier in particular, the down-to-earth Arkansan Zachariah Cashwell. Their strange romance is the central thread of the book, but there is no chemistry between the two characters. The canny Cashwell seems too smart to get involved with a woman as melancholy and disturbed as Carrie, and at one point their relationship takes a bizarre and violent turn that defies credibility. If I were Cashwell, I would've headed for the hills, one leg and all.

As someone who brought comfort to the dying and honor to the dead during her lifetime, I wanted to admire Carrie McGavock, but the character Hicks creates is so closed-off and self-absorbed that I never warmed up to her. By the end of the novel, I wasn't sure whether to think Carrie was a secular saint or a monstrously selfish woman who preferred to spend her time grieving over the dead because it was easier than facing the sorrows and challenges of living.

THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH is one of the finest pieces of historical fiction - based on a remarkable true story - I've read in a long, long time. I absolutely loved this book. How could I not when this literary novel made me gasp in awe at Robert Hicks's utterly riveting narrative (you'll see when you get to page 112), admire the true-life heroics of the protagonist, and, oh, I'll just say it - cry twice?

Two things make the book special: Carrie McGavock's astonishing life and Robert Hicks's sheer gift of storytelling.

Carrie McGavock is the most famous Southern woman you've never heard of. Her life changed forever on November 30, 1864 at the moment General Bedford Forrest set foot on her Franklin, TN home, Carnton Plantation, and promptly commandeered the house as a field hospital for the Confederate Army. The Battle of Franklin left 9,000 soldiers dead that day - 7,000 of them Confederates - and scores of the wounded and dead ended up at Carnton. Carrie became infamously known as an angel of mercy for her unflinching care of the men, but when the battle ended, her story was far from over.

In 1866 a neighbor of the McGavock's wanted to plow a field that contained the remains of 1,500 Confederate soldiers. Outraged, Carrie and her husband John dug up the bodies themselves and brought them to Carnton, thereby creating the nation's only privately owned Confederate Cemetery. Carrie plotted the cemetery and recorded the name and regiment of each soldier in her "book of the dead." Her heroics caused her to be known throughout the country as "The Widow of the South" until her death in 1905.

Robert Hicks has masterfully recreated a long-forgotten moment in American history within the confines of a fictional narrative. And he does it flawlessly, constructing an epic love story (think COLD MOUNTAIN meets DR. ZHIVAGO) that is as unforgettable as its protagonist.