The featured title for the March Book Discussion will be a historical fiction novel: “The Widow of the South” by Robert Hicks.
Carnton Plantation, 1894: Carrie McGavock is an old woman who tends the graves of the almost 1,500 soldiers buried here. As she walks among the dead, an elderly man appears-the same soldier she met that fateful day long ago. Today, he asks if the cemetery has room for one more.
This book is based on an extraordinary true story. This brilliant, meticulously researched novel flashes back to 1864 and the afternoon of the Battle of Franklin, five of the bloodiest hours of the Civil War. While the fierce fighting rages on Carrie’s land, her plantation turns into a Confederate army hospital; four generals lie dead on her back porch; the pile of amputated limbs rises as tall as the smoke house. But when a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrives at her house, he awakens feelings she had thought long dead-and inspires a passion as powerful and unforgettable as the war that consumes a nation.
The author’s note section in the back of the book is full of photographs of the family, the plantation, and the cemetery as well as historical information.
We have a number of copies of this title at the library. Please stop by and check out one. The reading group will be meeting on March 18th to share thoughts on this title. Hope that you can attend!
