The Widow of the South is
based on a true story. One of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles was
fought in November 1864 in the small town of Franklin, Tennessee, south
of Nashville. The Carnton Plantation, owned by Carrie and John McGavock
on the outskirts of Franklin, was forced into service as a field
hospital. Carrie McGavock, grief-stricken over the loss of three of her
five children, was revived by the urgent need to care for the sick and
the dying. Her mission didn’t end after a few weeks, however. Almost
1,500 Confederate soldiers, most of whom who had been hastily buried
where they fell in the Battle of Franklin, were reburied on the Carnton
Plantation. For decades until her death in 1905, Carrie McGavock tended
to their graves. The cemetery, the largest privately owned burial
grounds in the nation, is now part of a historic site that also
includes the McGavock home and other plantation buildings.
That much is true, and it’s a great subject for a historical novel. But
because little is known about the McGavocks’ personal lives, Widow of the South author Robert
Hicks decided to embellish Carrie’s story by inventing an inexplicable
attraction between her and a wounded Confederate sergeant. It’s hard to
believe that Carrie, finding a purpose in service to the dying and the
dead, would have felt that the gruff sergeant held answers for her. One
wonders what the real Carrie McGavock would have thought about a love
affair that was fabricated to make her story more interesting.
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