I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.
Based on a true story, âThe Widow of the Southâ tells of the aftermath of the Civil War battle of Franklin, Tennessee, a devastating (and now largely-forgotten) bloodbath that left over 9,000 soldiers dead, wounded, captured, or missing. A local plantation house, owned by the McGavock family, was pressed into use as a field hospital, and the family later donated acreage for a cemetery when the shallow graves on the battlefield itself were threatened by the plow as agricultural land was put back into production in the post-war years.
On these bones, Hicks has grafted an odd love story, creating a wounded soldier whose passion for Carrie McGavock helps bring her out of the melancholy resulting from the deaths of three of her children and ultimately gives her the spirit and perseverance to create the memorial.
And that's where the story faltered for me. Both Carrie and the fictitious Zachariah Cashwell are brilliantly drawn but broken people whose obsession for one another feels forced and essentially baseless. The tale came to life for me only when Carrie and her husband John take on the fictionalized owner of the battlefield graveyard. One wonders what the novel might have been had Hicks chosen to make that conflict the center of the story.
Based on a true story, âThe Widow of the Southâ tells of the aftermath of the Civil War battle of Franklin, Tennessee, a devastating (and now largely-forgotten) bloodbath that left over 9,000 soldiers dead, wounded, captured, or missing. A local plantation house, owned by the McGavock family, was pressed into use as a field hospital, and the family later donated acreage for a cemetery when the shallow graves on the battlefield itself were threatened by the plow as agricultural land was put back into production in the post-war years.
On these bones, Hicks has grafted an odd love story, creating a wounded soldier whose passion for Carrie McGavock helps bring her out of the melancholy resulting from the deaths of three of her children and ultimately gives her the spirit and perseverance to create the memorial.
And that's where the story faltered for me. Both Carrie and the fictitious Zachariah Cashwell are brilliantly drawn but broken people whose obsession for one another feels forced and essentially baseless. The tale came to life for me only when Carrie and her husband John take on the fictionalized owner of the battlefield graveyard. One wonders what the novel might have been had Hicks chosen to make that conflict the center of the story.
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