Homeland: A Novel

By Barbara Hambly

Book Overview

Those who loved Cold Mountain or Geraldine Brooks's March will embrace and long remember this spellbinding novel of two remarkable women torn apart by conflict, sustained by literature and art, united... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553805525
• ISBN13: 9780553805529
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.1" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

Honeland: The Novel -- HIghly Recommended

Not having been a fan of Civil War stories, this book was recommended to me by my penpal who is a Southerner while I am a Mainer. She and I discussed the book via email... it was wonderful...I wanted it to end differently but how could it as it followed historical facts. I highly recommend this book.

I was blown away

I got the book because I know Barbara Hambly's work and enjoy her writing. Little did I know how good this book is. It is outstanding, and one I will recommend to all of my reading friends. Hambly tells the story in letters between two women, one a Southerner, the other a Northerner, at the beginning of and through the Civil War. Neither woman quite "fits" into her culture and community, and each sustains the other's right to be different. They write of their lives, their frustrations, happinesses and unhappinesses. They tell of their everyday lives, with all of the tragedies that took place during that War, and how each struggles to be faithful to her own principles and beliefs. Their letters speak not only of the commonplace and extraordinary tragedies of the Civil War, but, to me, of all wars, of what happens to the women and children who are not fighting but are deeply and personally affected by this war and all wars. I am going to buy another copy just to lend to close friends, because this is a story worth reading. I know it will haunt me forever, and I will probably re-read it at least once a year.

Behind the scenes of the Civil War

HOMELAND is an unusual novel, both in its epistolary style, and in the unusual situations of the two protagonists. (One is a Southerner who doesn't support the Confederacy; the other a Northerner whose husband left home in Philadelphia to join the army, but didn't join until he was in the South.) Acquaintances in person, they become friends through their letters. Most striking is the look at everyday life that develops in the course of the correspondence. Heroics are there, both obviously and also in the continued, determined survival in the face of overwhelming odds. More than any other book, this conveys the dogged, everyday struggle that each woman experiences, just because she sees no other choice. Others may give up; they keep going because they truly see no choice. As Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books give a view of slavery that is probably more accurate than any other that I've read, this book impressed me with the endurance required to survive insanity, horror, and the overwhelming pettiness of people at war. It is a fascinating read, and I recommend it highly.

Wonderful

A great achievement. Beautifully written, interesting, moving, and at times funny! It had me laughing out loud. The characters are complicated and entirely believable. I thought the 'letter' format would be distracting and it really wasn't. And I'm not so easily impressed.