Robert Hicks: Widow of the South

On November 30, 1864, in America, the Confederates' claim to secede from the Union became a lost cause.

Ragged and wasted, Confederate forces were quickly annihilated by an overwhelming Union presence in the small town of Franklin, Tennessee.

In the span of one afternoon, more than 9000 men — with a vast majority of losses on the Confederate side — lost their lives in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

In this, his first novel, Hicks ambitiously attempts to recreate the Battle of Franklin, alongside the biographical details of a bereaved plantation mistress turned war heroine.

The novel's "widow of the South", Carrie McGavock, is propelled out of a depressive stupor (over the loss of three of her five children) to do her duty for the cause.

When Carrie, her husband John and her slave-turned-servant Mariah are ordered to turn the Carnton plantation into a Confederate hospital, Carrie is brought back to life by her role as angel to the wounded and the dying.

Sergeant Zachariah Cashwell of the 24th Arkansas is no less the hero. A soldier with an exceptional ability to dodge a bullet, Cashwell charges into Yankee fire while bearing the flag of his regiment.  He injures his leg and finds himself under the belligerent (yet loving) care of Carrie McGavock.

Hell-bent on dying a quick death — a far better fate than prolonging
life among the squalor of Carnton's makeshift hospital — the sergeant resents Carrie's insistence that he bear the surgeon's knife.

What eventually transpires between them is predictable and the weakest link in the novel. The internal ramblings of their growing attraction go on and on.

Reflecting on her mounting attraction to Cashwell, Carrie says: "He was a sinful, flawed man, and those sins lay upon his heroics as accents of color on a plain quilt. He was not like the rest of the men in gray. His sins were what emboldened me, because I knew I could not be judged by him. His sins drew me in."

Mixing historical facts with fiction is thorny territory to be chartered by a first-time novelist. Widow of the South suffers from Hicks' obvious desire to glorify Carrie McGavock as an unsung heroine of the Civil War.

The novel only truly comes alive when Hicks dedicates several narratives to the blood-soaked Tennessee fields.

* Gail Bailey is an Auckland reviewer
* Bantam Press, $36.95