Charles Frazier Returns to the Civil War Period

Charles Frazier's first novel Cold Mountain is on my short list of favorite books. I read it the week it debuted on the recommendation of Donald Secreast during his appearance at the Writers Symposium at Caldwell Community College in 1997. I went on to teach the book in my senior English APP and AP classes, even taking a couple of groups to find and climb the real Cold Mountain after we finished reading.

I loved Thirteen Moons as well, so when I heard he had a new book set--at least in part--in the Civil War South, telling the story of Varina Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, I ordered the copy from Parnassus Books before its release. When I picked it up, I was even happier to learn Frazier would be coming to Nashville for the library's Salon@615. He appeared with Paula McLain, who is promoting her new novel Love and Ruins (next on my reading list), interviewed by Ann Patchett.

I was especially curious to see how much of the book was fiction and how much was researched. I remember the book I, Varina in my high school library, but I hadn't remembered much of the history of this woman who played a secondary role in history. In this novel, Frazier brought together his title character and James, a grown African American man who had been raised alongside the Davis's own children, but who was separated from the family when the Davis's fled at the war's end.

Frazier explained that James is based on a real boy, but that no record survives of his life after separated from the Davis family. He just imagined a future for him, providing an effective structure for the novel. Piecing together his own memory and finding mention of himself in a book about the Davises sends him in search of Varina, now an older woman living in New York at what is evidently a hotel for "rest cure." His questions provide the avenue for flashbacks that tell the story of V, as she's called in the novel, before she met Jefferson Davis, still a grieving widower and throughout their not-always-happy marriage.

Because Frazier writes novels, not history, he deftly uses the historical fact to weave together a powerful story. As he admitted in the interview, he wasn't interested in writing about Civil War battles. Just as in Cold Mountain, the focus stays on the individual characters, providing plenty of rich details and dwelling in the grey areas.  The novel also has the advantage of Frazier's rich prose, engrossing dialogue, and description that readers are not tempted to skim.

And once again, he's omitted quotation marks.

Charles Frazier Returns to the Civil War Period

The Other Book

It's been awhile since I read Robert Hicks' first novel (as far as I know), Widow of the South, a story set in and around the Battle of Franklin (Tennessee) when the McGavock's home became a makeshift hospital and the lady of the house took it upon herself to bury and account for all the dead, rather than to let them be left anonymously where they fell.

Hicks' next novel, A Separate Country, also historical fiction, takes place after the war, but in New Orleans, rather than Middle Tennessee.  While he tells his story from a number of perspectives, they are all connected to the Confederate General John Bell Hood.  According to this story, near death from the "yellow jack" that also took his wife and oldest daughter Lydia just days earlier, he calls Eli Griffin, a young man he met during the war, and asks him to help him set his story straight.  According to the narrative, he's given the draft of his war novel Advance and Retreat (which he did actually write) to Gen. P. T. Beauregard, but now has second thoughts and wants the book destroyed. In its place, he has written an account of his life since.  At the time, Griffin finds the journals of Hood's late wife Anna Marie, letters written to their daughter Lydia.  Between the two stories, Griffin is able to put together what has really passed.

The marriage of Anna Marie Hennen, the socialite daughter of a prosperous New Orleans family, to Hood, bearded, with a useless arm and a missing leg, souvenirs of his war experience.  He fails in every business he attempts, in part because of lack of business acumen, in part because of the yellow fever epidemic that keeps merchandise from reaching the city.  Instead, he loses himself in a movement--perhaps just a drop in the bucket--to help the city's black residents to escape the miasma of the city.

Hicks' characters include three childhood friends of Annamarie, two orphans--a dwarf and a young white-skinned man with just enough blood to be considered black in the post-Civil War South--and a former street tough Michel, who has become the priest Father Mike.  Hood has also been haunted by Sebastian LeMerl, a New Orleans native of French descent who served under Hood and killed ruthlessly during the war.  His one gift, killing, has not deserted him in the years since.  It is he, however, to whom Hood wants his book delivered to see if he has cleared himself of his demons.

The novel not only paints curious, interesting characters, but a portrait of New Orleans--the sounds, the smells, the action.  I could not wait to look into the life of Hood, finding that the historical details are true and his reputation as a military leader who took unnecessary risks remains intact. I couldn't help wondering how many other famous men and women, having published memoirs with much of their lives remaining, would wish to have rewritten or amended their stories.

Note that misspelling of proper names (which I will edit when I look closely at my print copy of the book) are a direct result of my audiobook experience.

The Other Book

Southern Summer Reading Challenge

Since I'm participating in the challenge on Maggie Reads blog to read three Southern novels between June 15 and August 15, it is time to post my second novel completed, Sheila Kay Adams' My Old True Love. I've mentioned the book in earlier posts, but I am giving this entire post's attention to the book. I started and finished the book--almost without stopping--at the beach this week. I chose this novel because Adams has been selected as the 2009 Ragan-Rubin Award winner by the North Carolina English Teachers Association. Although I had read her stories, I hadn't read her full-length works until now. I am so glad I did.

The novel, which I learned in her afterword was based on her family history, is set in Sodom, NC, in Madison County (known as Bloody Madison because of events during the Civil War. ) From the first page, Arty, the narrator, rang so true for me. Adams' use of dialogue, toned down, she says, with help from her editor, evoked the voices of my grandmother for me.

Sometimes when I read Southern dialect (my native tongue), I wonder how readers without my familiarity (translation: Yankees) will take to the book. Then I remind myself that when I have attended a Shakespearean production with friends who weren't English majors, that I had some of the same misgivings--needlessly. I do know, though, that you have to read with your ear. All those reading lessons about squelching "subvocalization" go right out the door.

This book handles one of the historical periods that fascinates me most, addressing the tension between sides in areas where almost no one owned slaves. The bigger story, though, is about love and family and inner demons. Woven throughout the narrative are the old ballads, or "love songs," as they've always been known in this part of the country. I was so excited to learn at the end of the book that a "soundtrack" for the book, called All the Other Fine Things, had been recorded. (Tim O'Brien, John Herrmann, and Dirk Powell did the same for the novel Cold Mountain, long before it became a movie.)

Reading this book accomplished two or three things: First, it made me long to sit down and talk to Sheila Kay Adams. I also want to talk to someone else who has read the book, just to work my way through it. It also made me want to re-read Ron Rash's novel The World Made Straight, which deals in part with the Bloody Madison episodes. Finally, I want to choose my next Southern novel.

Southern Summer Reading Challenge