Article: Why This Book?
Living in Franklin, Tennessee, I grew intrigued by how the Civil War Battle of Franklin forever transformed the lives of those who had been caught up in its whirlwind. The story of General John Bell Hood, living as he did in post-War New Orleans, seemed particularly compelling as means to understand what the Battle of Franklin meant.
After all, most of those whose lives were forever changed by that battle didn’t stay in Franklin, but had made their way back to families and farms and hometowns across America. And of those who left, who better wore the effects of Franklin than this man who spent the rest of his life trying to explain and excuse those five bloodiest of hours?
Was Hood nothing more than the two-dimensional, drugged-up, drunken, petty, revengeful commander that some modern historians believe him to be? Was there more to his story than all the unfounded allegations, assumptions, and rumors - most of which, it seemed to me, to be little more than revisionist history born in the years before the Civil War Centennial?
Besides my curiosity about Hood, I’ve had a lifetime connection with New Orleans. Growing up, New Orleans held sway in so many family tales and stories – so that, walking into Galatoire’s that first time, seemed like a homecoming – the wallpaper and smells were all so familiar.
For well over one hundred and fifty years, my family has always returned to New Orleans, as I now come back, again and again. I was there for a bachelor party in early fall of 2005, but never imagined the effects and havoc that would come a week later, with Katrina.
Returning to the city three months after Katrina, nothing I had seen on TV or print, nothing I had heard from friends or acquaintances, could prepare me for what I found. Making my way through this city I thought I knew so well, I felt I was walking through a world that seemed far more like descriptions I had read of Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge than my New Orleans. I knew then that this book had to be set there, and that New Orleans would be as much a character of this story as its setting.
Did it really all begin with the Army Corp of Engineers and the most recent batch of inept and self-serving politicians? As I began to learn about New Orleans, researching far beyond my family’s and my own experiences, a far richer, deeper story came to life. These men and women, so distant and removed through time and circumstances, began to emerge with hopes and dreams much like mine.
Fortunately, through the work and passion of so many in New Orleans, the city has survived and is moving forward. The scars that made it seem like Phnom Penh are, now, healing with time. But they will remain scars forever.
This is my homage to New Orleans - to those folks who stayed and have labored and have moved forward – and to General John Bell Hood and his extraordinary wife, Anna Marie.
I hope this novel will lead us into a better understanding of this place I love, and of the folks who came before us.
As I read and researched and lived through this story, it seemed more and more possible to discard the myths that now surround the “historical” Hood, and to begin again to understand the importance of the Battle of Franklin as Union historians did – both for what happened there, and for what didn’t happen there. The Battle of Franklin was far more than the lunacy of a drugged-up, pain-racked, revengeful commander, and I hope some of this comes out in the pages of A Separate Country.
Robert Hicks