The Best Book I've Never Read

OK. I get it. And I PROMISE I'll read it... as soon as I finish the 4 books I'm currently inching my way through: one by the nightstand, one by the bathtub, one audio in the car, and one for my lunch break at work.

Everybody and their grandma is telling me to read Widow of the South by Robert Hicks. I'm not a big historical fiction fan, but I do like Tom Franklin and Howard Bahr, so I'm sure I can be convinced to give this one a shot.

Basic premise from the publisher:
"The title character of this haunting historical novel is Carrie McGavock, whose farmhouse was commandeered as a Confederate field hospital before the tragic battle at Franklin, Tennessee, in November 1864. That day, 9,000 soldiers perished. This tragic event turned McGavock into "the widow of the South." She spent the rest of her life mourning those lost, eventually reburying nearly 1,500 of them on her property. Robert Hicks's first historical novel captures the life-altering force that war exerts even on noncombatants. The Widow of the South is a brilliant novel that captures the end of an era, the vast madness of war, and the courage of a remarkable woman to claim life from the grasp of death itself."


Apparently Hicks himself is an absolute hoot to meet - a great entertainer as well as a writer. And he's also personally led the campaigne to preserve the Historic Carnton Plantation where the novel is set, and the nearby Franklin Battlefield.

So instead of trying to talk you into reading it, I suppose I'll shut up and crack it open.