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Bezig met laden... The Widow of the South (editie 2009)door Robert Hicks
Informatie over het werkThe Widow of the South door Robert Hicks
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Rabck from BookstoGive; second book I've read about the battle of Franklin and Carnton Plantation. Carrie's house was requisitioned as a field hospital for the bloodiest battle yet in the Civil War. A Southern bred plantation wife, Carrie & her Creole servant, Mariah, along with others, tend to the overwhelming amount of wounded that filled every nook and cranny in the house & finally spill out into the yard. They become "her boys". She writes letters to their kin, and many write to her looking for their kin. Quite a few years later, when a neighbor's field is going to be plowed, Carrie's husband and others relocate 1500 of the Confederate bodies to land adjacent to her family cemetery, burying them by their state and marking the graves with their initials. Carrie keeps a full accounting of their names in a book, and for the rest of her life, she and Mariah walk the gravesite to honor what she told their kin - they would be remembered. Interestingly, the author is on the preservation committee for Carnton, which is how he had access to a lot of research for the book. ( ) Took a while before I got caught up in this book, but it turned out to be a very worthwhile read. I can remember driving through Franklin when I was on my "tour" several years ago of places where my great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, but I didn't stop, as Franklin wasn't part of his history. But I could picture the countryside, and I could imagine some of what my ancestor must have gone through, and the book made me wonder more about the character of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Battle of Franklin took place in Tennessee on November 30, 1864, just months before the American Civil War’s official end at Appomattox. The battle was a devastating loss for the Confederate side, with casualty figures far exceeding those of other battles. The army designated Carnton, a plantation owned by John McGavock, as a hospital. McGavock’s wife, Carrie, threw herself into caring for the wounded and dying soldiers. Carrie knows grief, having lost three of her five children. She lives in isolation, rarely going into town. Besides her family, the only person Carrie is in close contact with is Mariah, a Black woman about Carrie’s age, who was a childhood companion and accompanied Carrie when she married John. At first she resists the Army’s demand to take over her house, and is surprised to find herself responding to a call of sorts, working around the clock to provide bandages, water, food, and shelter. After the war, Carrie learns that a prosperous man in town plans to plow up a nearby field that was used as a cemetery. She successfully intervenes and organizes a reburial of all the men interred there, with stones marking each person’s place of rest. The Widow of the South is Carrie’s story, a fictional account of historic events. Carrie’s role in the creation of the cemetery is well documented, but as is often the case with female historic figures, there is much about her life that is unknown. The novel is an interesting imagining of likely events and circumstances that might have caused Carrie to behave as she did. The author’s note at the end of the book includes photos of Carrie and her family, commentary separating fact from fiction, an an extensive bibliography. I enjoyed reading about a part of Civil War history completely unfamiliar to me, and am glad Robert Hicks chose to celebrate the Carrie McGavock’s important role.
A thunderous, action-rich first novel of the Civil War, based on historical fact. Music publisher Hicks treats a long-overlooked episode of the war in this account of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn., which took place in November 1864 near Nashville. As a field hospital is pitched in her field, Carrie McGavock, an iron-spined farm woman and upstanding citizen of the town, takes it upon herself to tend after the Confederate wounded; later, she and her husband will rebury 1,500 of the fallen on their property. Hicks centers much of the story on Carrie, who has seen her own children die of illness and who has endurance in her blood. “I was not a morbid woman,” Carrie allows, “but if death wanted to confront me, well, I would not turn my head. Say what you have to say to me, or leave me alone.” Other figures speak their turn. One is a young Union officer amazed at the brutal and sometimes weird tableaux that unfold before him; as the bullets fly, he pauses before a 12-year-old rebel boy suffocating under the weight of his piled-up dead comrades. “Suffocated. I had never considered the possibility,” young Lt. Stiles sighs. Another is an Arkansas soldier taken prisoner by the Yankees: “I became a prisoner and accepted all the duties of a prisoner just as easily as I’d picked up the damned colors and walked forward to the bulwarks.” Yet another is Nathan Forrest, who would strike fear in many a heart as a Confederate cavalryman, and later as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Hicks renders each of these figures with much attention to historical detail and a refreshing lack of genre cliché, closing with a subtle lament for the destruction of history before the bulldozer: “One longs to know that some things don’t change, that some of us will not be forgotten, that our perambulations upon the earth are not without point or destination.” An impressive addition to the library of historical fiction on the Civil War, worthy of a place alongside The Killer Angels, Rifles for Watie and Shiloh. OnderscheidingenErelijsten
A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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