COURTESY: SQUAREBOOKS.COM
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is just around the corner, and widows from the war will finally be marching for revenge – at least in fiction. Jeffrey Stayton, an English professor here at the University of Mississippi, has just released his first novel, “This Side of the River,” in which a new twist on history unfolds on the pages of the book.
Today from 5 – 6 p.m., Stayton will be presenting his novel at Square Books to celebrate the book’s release. He will be reading a few passages, answering some questions and signing copies of “This Side of the River,” which hit the shelves in bookstores and on Amazon last week.
This historical fiction novel tells a gritty tale of young war widows in the summer of 1865, after the end of the Civil War and the collapse of the Confederacy, who rally around to ride north to burn Sherman’s home in revenge for his burning Georgia.
“It’s a western set in the South,” Stayton said. “It’s a real ‘Heart of Darkness’ kind of odyssey.”
Stayton started work on the novel 18 years ago when he stumbled across two memoirs and a diary titled “Terry Texas Ranger Trilogy.” After thousands of pages of reading and drafts, Stayton finally had what is now page one of the current novel.
“When I teach Southern lit and about the Civil War era, I usually choose a wartime journal from a white woman either in Georgia or somewhere where they see the worst of [the war], and what really fascinated me was that the level of hate these women had, especially for Sherman, was palpable,” Stayton said about the inspiration that led him to start writing. “I think the natural progression was, ‘What would happen if these women decided to mount up and ride north? What type of story would that be?’” Stayton pointed out that with the upcoming anniversary there is a rise in interest in the stories of women during the Civil War, and he hopes his novel can contribute to the lesser heard voices from that time 150 years ago.
Though the story is an imagined history, it was not written without thorough research and inspiration.
“There are things I learned that didn’t make it into the novel,” Stayton said. He added that all the extra research was “an attempt to understand exactly what these women would have been thinking.”
Despite the heavy material, Stayton said that the novel was written with no particular message that he intended to spread; however, he did share what he learned in the process of writing it.
“War is waste,” Stayton said. “The fact that we expect young people to go fight our battles is really cowardly.”
He said the story is dark and absurd, but he hopes that readers will be freed of the idea that war can solve problems and that the glamour of the Civil War lore can be torn away.
Amanda Mae on goodreads.com said of the novel, “The premise of Confederate widows banding together to march north and burn Sherman’s house in retribution is one of the best alt history plots I’ve ever come across!”
Stayton responded to this by saying his first reader called it the best thing that Stayton has ever written. It’s a raw tale that is not intended for the faint of heart, but the tales these characters can teach us about a dark time in the United States’ history are definitely worth the read.
