The Widow of the South

I picked this book up at Costco when it was first published. I don't know why exactly. I was probably just giving in to the urge that I continually fight to buy a new book. There are others on my shelves of books to read that I felt more drawn to when I picked this one up, but I still picked it up and forged ahead. It took me half a month to read, so it wasn't a page turner in the classic sense of that description, but at the same time, I savored every word as I read it. The Widow of the South is the nickname given to Carrie McGavock (an actual person), a woman whose home was taken over by the Confederate Army to serve as a hospital for the wounded in the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. At the beginning of the story she is a woman broken by the tragic loss of her young children. She has used her grief to retreat from the world, form her remaining family, and from her obligations as mistress of a large plantation. In her eyes, God has forsaken her. She is alone and she wishes, more than anything to die. Then the Civil War (or the War of the Southern Rebellion--as my high school American History teacher called it) comes to her front door. Suddenly she is charged with a task that is insurmountable. During the battle, more than 9200 soldiers are killed. Many more are wounded. Hundreds of soldiers come to her house to be either nursed back to health, or to be ushered into death. She meets Zachariah Cashwell, a wounded soldier, and for some reason feels herself drawn to him. He believes, like herself, that all he wants is to die. Inexplicably, Carrie refuses to allow him to, and instead saves his life by insisting that he have his leg amputated. As her recovers in her home, she comes to know him. She realizes that neither of them truly wants to die--that living is the most important thing.

A quote almost near the end of the book explains the magnitude of Carrie's experiences. "I am alone on this earth. How often had I that that very same thing, rocking in my room above the entryway, imagining that I had been abandoned by my own children? On my knees in angry prayer I had said those words as both a statement of fact and an accusation. But I knew now I was not alone on this earth. It hadn't come to me in a rush, there were no angels involved. I had just kept living, and living had shown me that there were other things in the world, like a one legged sergeant who listened to me like I was the most exotic thing in the world, like a boy who could die on the floor of my house thinking only of how to get word to his mother, like a husband who would do anything for me even if it meant angering the man who held his debts, and so many other things that I had observed just by sitting and living and keeping my eyes open (374)."

This seems to be a theme in my life lately--something I've thought about a lot. It definitely fits in with the idea that the sum of the bad will never equal the sum of the good. Carrie was so overcome with the bad in her life that she was unable to recognize that there was any good. For her the death of her children wiped away any good that she had had. It was the terrible tragedy of the war and the resulting project of giving the fallen soldiers a peaceful cemetery in which to lay, that helped her to wake up and see the actual richness of her life. It seems that this is one of the failings of our culture. We are taught to think that we must have more, that what we have isn't good enough, that we don't see the people around us who love and appreciate us. We fail to recognize ways that we can bless each other's lives. Life and all of it's gifts is abundant. I'm grateful that I've read and talked about this lately so I can remember to open my eyes and see.

And now I have to end-- a little earlier than I would have liked, because to answer the question I pose every day in my URL, no, she is not going to take a nap and now she's starting to cry!

Next up (and this will be an exciting one for you all, I just know it) Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis.

Total pages read by end of February: 3163.