Title: Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart, Rebel Nurse: Part 1
Author: Dr. Larry G. Morgan
Publisher: Go to Publish
ISBN: 1647491789
Pages: 268
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart, Rebel Nurse: Part 1 is about the lives and times of people storm-tossed by love and loss during the American Civil War runs in eerie parallel to recent events in our nation’s Capitol. The book owes its allure and drama to its masterly display of the ambivalence and tragedy of a nation turned against itself.
Time: 1850s-1862. Place: Groveton, Virginia. The emerging Confederate states are mobilizing many thousand soldiers and all its resources to fight off the incursions of the industry-heavy Union. Noah Rowland, a loving husband and farmer, has to abandon his farmlands in order to protect his daughter Ivy from the violence of war. Ivy’s mother Sara dies during childbirth, leaving Ivy in the sole care and custody of her dad.
Thanks to the careful ministrations and tutelage of her dad, Ivy becomes a beautiful, dignified, compassionate woman. (She is a born winner). Every man falls in love with her, including Seth Wommack, an estimable boy in blue. Seth leads his troops to many battlefield victories; Seth wins Ivy’s heart. When the exigencies and displacements of war separate the lovers, Ivy dedicates herself to caring for the tragically wounded soldiers of the South. After months of heartbreak, Ivy makes a very tentative romantic commitment to Joseph, ‘the blue-eyed Demon,’ a handsome and upright Confederate officer. Joseph too is smitten by Ivy.
The backdrop of this swift and energetic book is the South; the South torn by battle, and the loss of many of its brightest sons. Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart, Rebel Nurse is a double-edged narrative because its pace and tone, and Ivy’s riven heart, reflect the deep ambivalence of both that war and of our present-day conflict with marginalized ‘nationalistic’ elements. The ‘extras’ in this cinematic novel are the wounded, the limping and bleeding soldiers recruited in the Confederate cause.
The book has many strengths. The writing is genuine, heartfelt, and warmly evocative of the time and place. The narrative voice resonates with southern intonation and captures the mood and spirit of the time. The book is a remarkable time machine and is cinematic in scope.
The author, Dr. Larry G. Morgan, was born in 1944 in a three-room shack in North Carolina. He is accomplished as a writer (having published many novels, and possibly a sequel to the present one) and an educator, serving as a teacher and school principal in North Carolina. His life experience and wisdom endow his novel with authenticity, grace, and the dignity of the ‘Old South.’