THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH

Paul Boehmer starts this ensemble reading in hushed tones, as if afraid he'll be caught. In short order, it's clear why. While the novel's factual roots--Southerner Carrie McGavock's lifelong devotion to the buried Confederate dead in her plantation's cemetery--are poignant, author Hicks reduces Carrie to a lovesick cipher who meanders through a cliché-riddled romance with a wounded soldier to whom she's inexplicably drawn. The narrators make a valiant effort--Lorna Raver is suitably creaky and drawly, Stephen Hoye does his level best to imbue every sentence he utters with impending doom, and Scott Brick wrangles various soldiers who wander in and out of this audiobook-- but the listener's mind will wander. A.M.D. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 06]