"The Widow of the South" by Robert Hicks ***

> USA author, orig. published in 2005
> Debut novel
> Based on true events during the Civil War, the battle at Franklin, Tennessee which left 9200 men wounded and 1500+ dead
> Carrie McGavock story based in historical fact, Widow of the South, Keeper of the Book of the Dead...3 of her 5 children sied very young and she had been a fog of depression and grief until the battle forced her to turn her home into a field hospital

> Vocabulary: 1) ambuscade:to place in ambush

> p.27..."But in those moments before the fight, if you were a smart man, you'd figure out a way to convince yourself that it didn't matter to you if you lived or died."

> So strange that people would set up for a battle as if it were a picnic, "...as if he were watching a fabulously intricate play."

> p.136..."I was freer than I'd ever been. I felt obliged to the world, a world much larger than that contained between the four walls of Carnton, and although the burden seemed larger, I was similarly enlarged by the burden of shouldering it."

> p.143..."It is possible to know yourself--every kindness, every urge to violence, every petty resentment--in chaos. I discovered that my mind sharpened as my surroundings grew more uncertain and unfamiliar."

> p.145..."Loneliness was what we feared about death, he said, and to embrace it in life seemed mad."

> LibraryThing Review: This is one of those works of historical fiction in which the historical part was really interesting, but the fiction was just so-so. Carrie mcGavock,aka The Widow of the South and The Keeper of the Book of the Dead, is a fascinating historical figure. She realized her purpose in life after the nightmarish battle in franklin Tennessee during the Civil War. Her purpose? To care for and watch over the dead, numbering 9200! I was not particularly engaged by the fictional part of the story however. It felt as if the author was trying too hard t make each character amazing in some way, and the plot too mystical. For me it just didn't work.