The Orphan Mother

July 25, 2016
Hicks’s (The Widow of the South) latest yarn opens two years after the end of the Civil War, focusing on freed slave Mariah Reddick, a trusted and sought-after midwife in Franklin, Tenn. Mariah now has a grown son, Theopolis, a cobbler with political aspirations. Mariah becomes acquainted with George Tole, a free black New Yorker whose reputation as a sharp-shooting assassin precedes him to Franklin. But George has been coerced by an evil Franklin magistrate, Elijah Dixon, to do his bidding, and when a political rally at which Theopolis tries to take the stage becomes violent, the young man is killed—but it’s not clear who killed him. The lives of Mariah and George converge as Mariah seeks retribution and George seeks redemption, each playing a major role in unmasking the latent nastiness among the deeply prejudiced Franklin citizenry. Hicks is a talented storyteller, and this story moves at a clip, but it feels deliberate and inorganic, his characters sometimes seemingly just vehicles moving the story forward. Mariah has lost her only son, yet she shows an unbelievable lack of emotion. The bad guys, while compelling, are amusing caricatures. Only George seems truly flesh and blood, and is the most memorable character. Agent: Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary.

July 1, 2016
Hicks (A Separate Country, 2009, etc.) extends his Tennessee-set historical saga into the years immediately following the Civil War.The Reconstruction Era was one of the messiest times in American history, not least because establishing civil and political rights for African-Americans newly freed from slavery was left unfinished for another century. That turmoil forms the setting for Hicks' latest, located, as was its predecessor volume, in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. Formerly a slave in the household of Carrie McGavock, the widow of Hicks' title, Mariah Reddick has long been renowned as a midwife, and in this work she has built up both property holdings and local esteem. Her son, Theopolis, has empire-building desires of his own that earn him a bullet and Mariah endless suffering; Carrie assures Mariah that "he was a special boy," but that does nothing to ease the pain except to establish yet another bond between the two women, one forged in "grief and rage so inarticulate and so elemental that [Mariah] would come to rely upon it, like a cane or an extra toe, to give her balance." Now the question is to find out who wanted Theopolis dead, and why. There is no shortage of suspects among the dispossessed planters and crofters "made poor and small by Reconstruction, their punishment for opposing the Republicans and fighting for the Confederacy." The villain of the piece has murkier motives still, but Hicks nicely complicates what otherwise is a historical potboiler with the arrival of a soft-spoken African-American sleuth who digs into the mystery while nursing griefs of his own. Tole has reasons for going after the conspirators who murdered Theopolis, and though Carrie assures Mariah that as the town's midwife "you're the mother of everyone in Franklin," it's a hailstorm of avenging bullets and not kind words that makes this engaging novel pop.Satisfying historical fiction, of particular appeal to readers who live near the banks of the Harpeth or Cumberland.

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August 1, 2016
Freedom and justice are complicated concepts as it is, but add in race, and the stew gets even thicker. Mariah Reddick, a newly freed slave, finds this truth out the hard way when her son, Theopolis, dares to dream beyond the narrow confines of the path laid out for him by virtue of his skin color. Mariah, a successful midwife in Franklin, Tennessee, becomes an orphan mother when her ambitious son is shot at a political rally. In the early days of Reconstruction, justice for blacks might be a dubious concept, but Mariah is determined she will have hers. Aiding her is George Tole, a black man new to town, fleeing from his own fractured past, who uses questionable means to deliver retribution. Mariah's complicated relationship with her former owner, Carrie McGavock, is one of the many highlights of Hicks' (A Separate Country, 2009) engaging, if cloying, and certainly important examination of U.S. history, which is especially revealing in light of the many recent fatal shootings of African Americans. When it comes to freedom, one size does not fit all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2016

For most of her life, midwife Mariah Reddick was a slave at Carnton, the McGavock home in Franklin, TN, that had served as a Confederate hospital and is now in 1867 a cemetery for the war dead (The Widow of the South). As a freedwoman, Mariah lives in town. Her son, Theopolis, a cobbler, is excited to be making a speech in the town square with "a man running for U.S. Congress and other bigwigs." Can just two years have brought so much change? But adapting to Reconstruction is not an easy thing for blacks or whites. George Tole is a freedman from New York. A sharpshooter during the war, he is familiar with death and with taking orders. White magistrate Elijah Dixon enlists George to help him with a matter that requires his skill. Things, of course, rarely go as planned. Theopolis ends up dead, and Mariah is determined to find out who is responsible. VERDICT Hicks's (A Separate Country) bittersweet novel reveals a woman discovering a new sense of self in slavery's aftermath. She becomes driven by a demand for justice, though justice for blacks is almost impossible to imagine. A beautifully rendered portrait for all lovers of Civil War fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16.]--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016

Midwife Mariah Reddick, the former slave of Carrie McGavock (seen in Hicks's New York Times best seller, The Widow of the South), searches for justice when her upwardly striving son is murdered.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.