The Widow of the South

The Widow of the South
Author: Robert Hicks
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2005-08-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759514437

Based on a true story, this debut Civil War novel follows a Southern plantation woman's journey of transforming her home into a hospital for the war. This debut novel is based on the true story of Carrie McGavock. During the Civil War's Battle of Franklin, a five-hour bloodbath with 9,200 casualties, McGavock's home was turned into a field hospital where four generals died. For 40 years she tended the private cemetery on her property where more than 1,000 were laid to rest.

Widow of Gettysburg

Widow of Gettysburg
Author: Jocelyn Green
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2013-04-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802481396

For all who have suffered great loss of heart, home, health or family; true home and genuine lasting love can be found. When a horrific battle rips through Gettysburg, the farm of Union widow Liberty Holloway is disfigured into a Confederate field hospital, bringing her face to face with unspeakable suffering—and a Confederate scout who awakens her long-dormant heart. But when the scout doesn’t die, she discovers he isn’t who he claims to be. While Liberty’s future crumbles as her home is destroyed, the past comes rushing back to Bella, a former slave and Liberty’s hired help, when she finds herself surrounded by Southern soldiers, one of whom knows the secret that would place Liberty in danger if revealed. In the wake of shattered homes and bodies, Liberty and Bella struggle to pick up the pieces the battle has left behind. Will Liberty be defined by the tragedy in her life, or will she find a way to triumph over it? Inspired by first-person accounts, Widow of Gettysburg is second book in the Heroines Behind the Lines series. These books do not need to be read in succession. For more information about the series, visit www.heroinesbehindthelines.com.

A Separate Country

A Separate Country
Author: Robert Hicks
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2009-09-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0446558362

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever. At Gettysburg, he lost the use of his left arm. At the Battle of Chickamauga, his right leg was amputated. Starting fresh after the war, he married Anna Marie Hennen and fathered 11 children with her, including three sets of twins. But fate had other plans. Crippled by his war wounds and defeat, ravaged by financial misfortune, Hood had one last foe to battle: Yellow Fever. A Separate Country is the heartrending story of a decent and good man who struggled with his inability to admit his failures-and the story of those who taught him to love, and to be loved, and transformed him.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
Author: Allan Gurganus
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2001-10-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375726632

Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and readers alike fell in love with the voice of ninety-nine-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the twentieth century, when she was fifteen and her husband was fifty. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence," Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood. Lucy’s story encompasses everything from the tragic death of a Confederate boy soldier to the feisty narrator's daily battles in the Home--complete with visits from a mohawk-coiffed candy striper. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is a marvel of narrative showmanship and proof that brilliant, emotional storytelling remains at the heart of great fiction.

Praisesong for the Widow

Praisesong for the Widow
Author: Paule Marshall
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 257
Release: 1984-04-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0452267110

From the acclaimed author of Daughters and Brown Girl, Brownstones comes a “work of exceptional wisdom, maturity, and generosity, one in which the palpable humanity of its characters transcends any considerations of race or sex”(Washington Post Book World). Avey Johnson—a black, middle-aged, middle-class widow given to hats, gloves, and pearls—has long since put behind her the Harlem of her childhood. Then on a cruise to the Caribbean with two friends, inspired by a troubling dream, she senses her life beginning to unravel—and in a panic packs her bag in the middle of the night and abandons her friends at the next port of call. The unexpected and beautiful adventure that follows provides Avey with the links to the culture and history she has so long disavowed. “Astonishingly moving.”—Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review

The Orphan Mother

The Orphan Mother
Author: Robert Hicks
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0446576131

An epic account of one remarkable woman's quest for justice from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow of the South and A Separate Country. In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock--the "Widow of the South"--has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But when her ambitious, politically minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah--no stranger to loss--finds her world once more breaking apart. How could this happen? Who wanted him dead? Mariah's journey to uncover the truth leads her to unexpected people--including George Tole, a recent arrival to town, fleeing a difficult past of his own--and forces her to confront the truths of her own past. Brimming with the vivid prose and historical research that has won Robert Hicks recognition as a "master storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle)./DIV

The Widow

The Widow
Author: Fiona Barton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2016-02-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101990465

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A twisted psychological thriller you’ll have trouble putting down.”—People “If you liked Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, you might want to pick up The Widow by Fiona Barton. Engrossing. Suspenseful.”—Stephen King Following the twists and turns of an unimaginable crime, The Widow is an electrifying debut thriller that will take you into the dark spaces that exist between a husband and a wife. There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. Now her husband is dead, and there’s no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. The truth—that’s all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything... An NPR Best Book of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal’s 5 “Killer Books” of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year Includes a Readers Guide and an excerpt of Fiona Barton’s The Child.

The Yankee Widow

The Yankee Widow
Author: Linda Lael Miller
Publisher: MIRA
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 148807867X

From a New York Times–bestselling author, “moving and memorable, this novel reveals the impossible choices women face in wartime” (James Patterson, #1 New York Times–bestselling author). Caroline, the young wife of Jacob, a Union solider away at war, is raising their daughter alone on the family farm just outside of Gettysburg. Word arrives that her husband is wounded, so she travels to Washington City to find him. When Jacob succumbs, she brings his body home on the eve of the deadliest battle of the war. With troops and looters roaming the countryside, it is impossible for her to know who is friend and who is foe. Caroline fights to protect those she loves while remaining compassionate to the neediest around her, including two strangers from opposite sides of the war. Each is wounded. Each is drawn to her kindness. Both offer comfort, but only one secretly captures her heart. Still, she must resist exposing her vulnerability in these uncertain times when so much is at risk. In The Yankee Widow, gifted storyteller Linda Lael Miller explores the complexities and heartbreak that women experienced as their men took up arms to preserve the nation. “A must read for historical fiction fans.” —Publishers Weekly “Well told and readers will keep turning the pages.” —Booklist

Masterful Women

Masterful Women
Author: Kirsten E. Wood
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2005-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807863777

Many early-nineteenth-century slaveholders considered themselves "masters" not only over slaves, but also over the institutions of marriage and family. According to many historians, the privilege of mastery was reserved for white males. But as many as one in ten slaveholders--sometimes more--was a widow, and as Kirsten E. Wood demonstrates, slaveholding widows between the American Revolution and the Civil War developed their own version of mastery. Because their husbands' wills and dower law often gave women authority over entire households, widowhood expanded both their domestic mandate and their public profile. They wielded direct power not only over slaves and children but also over white men--particularly sons, overseers, and debtors. After the Revolution, southern white men frequently regarded powerful widows as direct threats to their manhood and thus to the social order. By the antebellum decades, however, these women found support among male slaveholders who resisted the popular claim that all white men were by nature equal, regardless of wealth. Slaveholding widows enjoyed material, legal, and cultural resources to which most other southerners could only aspire. The ways in which they did--and did not--translate those resources into social, political, and economic power shed new light on the evolution of slaveholding society.

Fate Moreland's Widow

Fate Moreland's Widow
Author: John Lane
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2015-02-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1611174708

Corruption, infatuation, and conflicting loyalties collide in a rural Southern mill town in this debut novel by an award-winning poet and environmentalist. On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker—a reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy—is drawn back into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice. The son of mill workers in Carlton, South Carolina, Crocker works as bookkeeper to the owner, George McCane. And when McCane decides to lay off families connected to the Uprising of ‘34, Crocker finds himself in the ill-fitting position of enforcer. But days after the evictions, a surprise indictment lands McCane in jail and sinks Crocker even deeper into the escalating tensions. While traversing mountain communities in McCane’s defense, Crocker must also negotiate with labor organizers and fend off his family’s skepticism of his social aspirations. Meanwhile, hanging over Crocker’s upended life is his infatuation with Novie Moreland—the young widow of a man McCane is accused of killing. Looking back on this crucial period of his life, Crocker knows he must seek out Novie Moreland once more if he is ever to find closure with the past. Foreword by New York Times best-selling author Wiley Cash