The Rebel Wife
by Taylor M. Polites
Simon & Schuster
02/07/2012
I really wanted to punch Buck in the face. Not that I thought Gus ought to, no, I wanted that pleasure for myself. I thought perhaps what would happen would, and it did, and I was happy with it–I still would have liked a chance to deck him. Ass.
Let me start over.
This is an excellent historical novel, beautifully written and well plotted. Polites’ writing pulls you into the time and the place, prompts you to see life through different eyes, and teaches you a little bit about where we, as a country, come from–all while providing excellent and suspenseful plotting. The details are intoxicating, the characters are memorable, and it’s a bit of a nail-bitter all the way to the end.
It’s hard to imagine life in the post-Civil War South, but Polites gives you a great taste. It’s a desperate time, filled with traumatized people as the whole country tried to heal. The formerly-prosperous white population had to change in ways it wasn’t prepared for and wasn’t willing to embrace and the newly freed slaves faced the disappointment of little actual change in their lives. People tried to find safety, made choices they regretted, sold what little they had, and felt the shame of surviving.
I fell into Augusta as a character–submerged and sypathetic–and felt her struggle for security and safety and her painful growth all the more keenly for that identification. She married for security and now finds the world is not going to play along. Everything she knew has shifted and twisted and she herself is twisting into something new. I love that twisting.
I also fell in love with the character of Simon slowly and surely, and I wished to see more of him. There were many characters I wished to see more of–if I had one complaint, it’s that the narrative spent too much time in Augusta’s head. There were many characters that I found my self repulsed by . . . well, I’m not spoiling the plot here. Suffice it to say, I had a hard time with a few, and I’m pretty sure I was supposed to.
If you like historical fiction, give this your time. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. It would make a particularly good reading group pick–full of things to discuss and contrast.
