Follow Here To Purchase The Rebel Wife

Author:Taylor M. Polites

Publisher:Simon & Schuster
ISBN:978-1-4516-2951-4

The red-related hues that dominate this book's handsome paper and cloth covers are well chosen for this tale of life and death in the Civil War years of the South. Whether it be the introductory death of the rebel wife's husband, the agonizing birth of the rebel wife's son, the gunning down of the rebel wife's brother along with members of her household staff, blood is always there in not-so-gay profusion.

In terms of the novel's story line, the central rebel is really more widow than wife. Although there are some backward glimpses into the life of Augusta Sedlaw before she married Eli Branson and even sketchier accounts of the marriage itself, the burden of the narrative is what Augusta is forced to deal with after Eli's gory, diseased death. In no particular order these challenges include two generations of very non-kissin' cousins, a black-sheep brother, embezzlement, and really hot weather. Overreaching all is a kind of treasure hunt for big non-Confederate bucks that Eli squirreled away just before he died.

Along the way there are episodes of tortuous childbirth, carnage at train stations, a white damsel rescued by a black hero, a gunfire death on the staircase of an antebellum mansion and masses evacuating a diseased territory in a panic. Fans of "Gone with the Wind" and "Jezebel" will feel right at home although they will surely miss the instances of joy and romance that elevated those works above the unyieldingly bloody battlefields that dominate "The Rebel Wife." Historical accuracy is laudable, but a captivating story is the stuff of great novels.

For this reviewer, the principal value of The Rebel Wife is its vivid illustration of the fact that blacks and women were co-victims of the South that existed prior to and for a long time after the Civil War. This reality, however, makes it difficult for an author to develop a genuinely heroic female character, and although the author of this novel gives it a good go in the final 18 pages of his work, ending it rather than beginning it on a "dark and stormy night," it's a bit late. One is almost tempted to say, "I knew Scarlett O'Hara, and you, Augusta Branson, are no Scarlett O'Hara."

The author of The Rebel Wife chooses to tell his tale in the present tense even though the events occurred 150 or so years ago. No problem; it's a commonly used device to infuse a story with an air of currency, and the erroneous lapses into the past tense are few and far between as are a couple of other grammatical errors that are even more sparse.

The author is clearly a master of not only vocabulary, simile, and metaphor in general but also the patois of the period which gives the novel a rich sense of authenticity.

Whereas the novel's dialogues tend to be sparse, its descriptive passages are micro-managed to the extreme. The passages are so well constructed and filled out with imaginative detail that one is tempted to forgive when they interrupt a moment of suspense, when the reader really wants to know what A is going to do to B a bit more than what the ambient breezes are doing or not doing at the moment. As long as these descriptive asides are strictly those of the author, one can tolerate, even enjoy. But when a black slave augments his quoted account of a mass drowning by noting that "the trees were just putting out their leaves, soft and tiny and green. New green that's almost yellow," one has to wonder if the author's descriptive gifts may have overrun their banks.


Follow Here To Purchase The Rebel Wife