Separate Country (Hicks) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Robert Hicks's riveting new novel takes up Hood's life after the war. Anyone who has ever lived in New Orleans must be prepared to be made homesick, and the bizarre cast of characters, including a dwarf, a burly priest and a boy of mixed and mysterious parentage, wouldn't seem right in any city but this one. I read A Separate Country with breakneck speed for that most old-fashioned of reasons: I wanted to see what happened next. And then I eagerly read it a second time to make sure I got the complicated twists and turns. Is there a better recommendation?"
Charlotte Hays - Washington Post



After the War, Hood scampered down to New Orleans in order to try to live as fully as possible. That's where Robert Hicks enters in his marvelous new book, which looks back on the legendary and monstrous general of the Civil War with a brand new set of eyes. Hicks doesn't ever let us forget that this was once a man who "cared very little for the men [he] ruined." Yet at the same time, this is a work which seems designed to remember Hood neither as a legend nor a monster but as a man.
Miami Herald


A Separate Country is a powerful evocation of New Orleans as it was in 1879, a book thick with history, rich in atmosphere. The characters walk the city's rough and tumble streets, witness the corruption of the Louisiana Lottery and the toll of the yellow fever epidemic, enact their very human love affairs, hide their secrets. To read it is to visit, for the length of its pages, an all-enveloping, passionately rendered past, beautiful and hallucinatory. "This city is not for the fainthearted," Hicks writes
New Orleans Times Picayune


[A] grand, ripped-from-the-dusty-archives epic of Confederate general John Bell Hood.... Hicks's stunning narrative volleys between Hood, Anna Marie and Eli, each offering variety and texture to a story saturated in Southern gallantry and rich American history.
Publishers Weekly


Suffused with racial tension, brutality, sweltering heat, and sickness, this is the tale of a warrior knowing "nothing about death, only killing" who finally seeks love and a reconciliation with God. Readers must see past the bugs and the stench of New Orleans to unravel the puzzle of these picaresque characters.... [[P]recise, evocative writing. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


A tale of mixed-up foolscap, dark secrets, a dwarf and a wharf. Tennessee-based Hicks...ventures here into Reconstruction-era New Orleans.... Hicks spins a taut tale, told in many voices, of tangled webs, vengeance and other unfinished business. Expertly written, with plenty of unexpected twists—a pleasure for...fans of literary mysteries.
Kirkus Reviews