The Widow of the South
Navigation Home Western Theatre Women African-Americans Southern Civilians Forrest
Hicks, Robert. The Widow of the South. New York: Warner, 2005.
Carrie McGavock, a planter's wife, neurasthenic, finds her Franklin, Tennessee home commandeered as a battlefield hospital by General N.B. Forrest. As the casualties flood in, Carrie awakens from her long isolation. She even falls in love with the fatalistic Zachariah Cashwell, an amputee escape artist who has defied death on the field and run from Union captors. In the years after the battle and the War, Carrie tends a vast Confederate cemetery on her property.
Based on true events and set in an extant graveyard, though the romance between Carrie and Zachariah is invented. One of the stronger evocations of a civilan life touched by warfare. Carrie's former slave and lifelong companion Mariah is a central character.
Links
- Official web site for the novel
- Save the Franklin Battlefield