The Dangers of Audio Books

I've always thought that listening to an iPod, MP3 player or any other device while walking or even driving could be dangerous - as in "you might not be aware of impending danger because you can't hear it". I never considered listening to an audio book while riding a stationary bike at the Y to be hazardous - hazardous in terms of embarrassment, not bodily injury.
Fortunately there weren't too many people in the room with me to see the tears flowing as I listened to the end of Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South. The novel is a fictionalized version of a true event that took place during and after the Civil War near the town of Franklin, Tennessee. The fighting took place November 30, 1864 and is known as The Battle of Franklin. 

 Before the two armies met on the battlefield, John and Carrie McGavock's house on Carnton Plantation had been commandeered as a Confederate field hospital. The floors of the house were covered with the wounded as was the yard outside. More than 6,000 soldiers of the South were killed or wounded. The pile of amputated limbs was higher than the wash house roof. The battle is described as one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States of America. General Hood's Army of Tennessee was all but destroyed.

 Author Robert Hicks became interested in Carrie McGavock and Carnton after being named to the board of directors for the Preservation of Carnton Plantation. His novel tells not only Carrie's part in tending to the wounded in her home, it tells the larger story of what happened afterwards - of all the dead buried in shallow graves where they fell on the battlefield. Two years after the end of the war, the owner of the land was going to plow it up and plant a crop. Rather than allow the bones of the dead to become fertilizer, she managed to have all the bodies dug up and re-interred in the family cemetery near her home.

At the end of the book, a family from Alabama arrives and asks Carrie to show them where their son is buried. They are going to take the body back home to be buried on their farm. When they see the graves and the beauty of the surrounding countryside, they decided to leave him buried there. A year later they return with a wagon load of dirt. Once again they ask to dig up their son - not to take his body home to Alabama, but to replace the soil covering him with the dirt from their farm. That is when I started bawling.

Hicks's book was published in 2005. It has lead to increased interest and funds for the restoration of Carnton Plantation and the battlefield area - much of which had become commercial development but which is now being returned to the way it looked during the Civil War Battlefield and made into a park. They hope to have it reconstructed  by November 30, 2014 in time for the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

As I've said before, I really enjoy novels based upon true stories. This book, either in audio or print form is so well done. Fictionalizing the story made it so interesting, so easy to get into. If we ever go on another trip to visit Civil War Battlefields, this one will be on the top of my list to see. (And I plan to read Hicks's next novel, A Separate Country.)