The Widow of the South
A novel
By
Robert Hicks
(Warner Books, 404 pages, $24.95)
Reviewed by
Thornton Sully

While the emaciated Confederate forces of General John Bell Hood fixed bayonets in the late afternoon of November 30th, 1864 in Franklin, Tennessee, the Grim Reaper honed his scythe, and could hardly contain himself.
Defying the consul of his incredulous field generals, six of whom would die that day, Hood ordered an uphill charge across pastoral slopes into the spittle of canon and musket.  Two miles in the distance Union troops were deeply entrenched, while the only cover for the boys in gray was the penetrable aura of their valor, the stupor induced by the knowledge of their own impending slaughter, and, for the lucky ones, the mounting pile of flesh that had fallen before them, by some accounts seven men high. The imminent annihilation was so disheartening that among the Union forces reincarnated under the command of historian-turned-novelist Robert Hicks, those whose humanity had not yet atrophied refused to fire.
The Widow of the South is a novel about nothing less than the night they truly drove ol’ Dixie down, and a remarkable event that followed.  The Confederacy faltered after Atlanta, but it fell at Franklin.
The charge is sounded.  It was imperative that Hood obliterate the Union forces of Brigadier General John Schofield before they could coalesce with additional troops fifteen miles further north in well-fortified Nashville, thereby becoming invincible. Schofield on- the-march had indeed been vulnerable the night before, and yet, as the Confederate army bivouacked, Schofield’s men passed quietly and unfettered within a few hundred yards, to the advantage of the higher ground and the sanctuary of solid breastworks already established by a smaller number of Union troops who had occupied Franklin for two years. How could an army of twenty thousand possibly have slipped through the night and his grasp? The blunder infuriated Hood.
Was his brazen charge, flawed only in that it failed, an irrational tantrum or was it endemic Confederate courage?  Historians still draw sabers over that, but in 1864 while the wails of the wounded and the death rattle of the dying were choking in the smoke of battle, Schofield ordered his men to evacuate to Nashville, leaving Hood the following dawn to count the bodies.  Fifteen hundred of them.
Hicks has mustered a confederation of cameos to authentically re-enact a slice of the battle. Their poignant voices are the soft artillery of Hicks’ own charge across the printed page upon which fall the dead and the dying. It is as if the departed were given ten minutes in the waiting room of their Maker with quill and parchment to dispatch their final recollections to Hicks.  But the war and The Widow of the South are not confined to the killing field.
On the day of the battle, before the first shots are fired, the Confederates commandeered the plantation house of Carrie McGavock for a field hospital.  Carrie is not Scarlet O’Hara.  Carrie has been in a constant state of mourning, as one by one three of her five children die of the usual causes rampant a century and a half ago. She is dry and withered and black is the color of her only dress and the color of her every sunrise.  The war that had politely kept itself at bay for four years suddenly staggered up to her veranda, and against her will it collapses tragically upon her door.  As does Zachariah Cashwell.
Cashwell survived the charge, and Carrie discovers him propped up among the bullet-ridden and lacerated casualties in her parlor, a kind of purgatory where the wounded await swift entry into God’s Heaven or the protracted agony of the surgeon’s Hell. Carrie has been pressed into service as a nurse, and is quickly intoxicated by her newly vested authority. Rather than shrinking from the task she is invigorated by it. Cashwell’s first salvo of stoic words, a suggestion to take others more in need, and that he himself was likely to die anyway, at once impress Carrie, wed, but in a passionless marriage.  “This is the way a man is supposed to talk.” she thinks. She reserves him a table with the surgeon. Cashwell despises her for it, preferring death.  Almost to punish herself for dispatching him to the frontlines of pain, Carrie herself attends the amputation of Cashwell’s leg, which is tossed from the second story window to a growing pyramid of discarded limbs.
And so their romance begins, as Hicks transitions gripping and accurate historical journalism into conventional fiction.  This, too, will prove to be an uphill charge.
His foray into a contrived love story loses the ground the authenticity of his narrative has triumphantly taken.  He obeys the formula: the lovers meet, deny attraction, obstacles are put in their way, and then there is a cathartic moment of union.  As with Hood, the only flaw of Hick’s battle plan is that it fails.  There is a further breach as his fiction surges forward: stoicism bleeds from virtually every major player, and we implore Hicks to plug the holes and apply the tourniquet. He declines, and as a result our vision blurs and it becomes difficult to differentiate the nuances of his characters, as it is similarly difficult to tell the difference between courage and bravado.  Sabers will undoubtedly be drawn here, too, in Hick’s defense.
It is entirely possible that stoicism or cowardice are the only outcomes of such a calamity the battle of Franklin documents, but stoic characters are potentially boring, even if they do extraordinary things. Ultimately, the test of a novel is its final page.  Do we lament that it has come to an end or do we embrace the armistice? Are we craving to discover if Scarlet ever gets Rhett back?  As The Widow of the South rambles among the head stones of the fallen, we are battle-weary and relieved that the shooting has stopped.
And yet, its weakness as a novel in no way diminishes its power as a story.
If we surrender ourselves to the eloquence of Hicks’ narrative, our consolation is to be made privy to an event in history that counterpoints the brutality of the battle that necessitated it.  A few years after the war, the dead, who were buried in haste not far from the McGavock plantation, come under attack once again.  A planter threatens to plow the fields in total disregard to the sanctity of the gravesite.  Carrie McGavock will not hear of it, and invites fifteen hundred exhumed corpses to reside on her own property. She cares for the graveyard of the re-interred the rest of her days.
Carrie McGavock made a willful effort to remember them all, though, by remembering, denied herself the luxury of healing. She, too, was a casualty of that late November afternoon.  Her generosity of spirit proved to be as profound as the sacrifice of those who died in her home, even, in her arms. The Widow of the South may fail as a novel, but it succeeds as history.  It preserves, even renews, the legacy of Carrie McGavock with such passion and clarity that it is no less poignant than the futility of the charge at Franklin or of the cause lost that was finally acknowledged at Appomattox.

Thornton Sully is a freelance writer in Oceanside

Addendum-direct quote

Carrie McGavock: (page appx 135)

“…It took some time before I realized that there was nothing I could do for a dying man except ease his journey a little, and that wasn’t accomplished by staring sadly into their faces and making it clear to them that, indeed, they would be dying soon.
When I realized that my gestures of comfort were only extinguishing hope, and therefore creating another agony, I began to bring the gravely injured men whiskey, which I poured down their throats with a smile.  And when the other men in the room complained about not getting their dram, I’d stand up and declare that the whiskey was only for the handsomest among them, and that the rest should count themselves lucky to get water.  The other men would curse and laugh.  The dying men with the taste of whiskey on their tongues knew the charade meant they would surely die, but I thought it possible I made them hopeful by swallowing my sadness. At least death was not something to fear, if a proper woman could treat it so cavalierly, and that was a form of hope.  That’s what I thought, at least.”

End:  body of review appx 1200 words minimum
Addendum:  appx 220 words