Widow of the South (Hicks)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 30, 1951
• Where—West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—unspecified college in Nashville, Tennessee
• Currently—lives in Franklin, Tennessee


Robert Hicks is the author of New York Times bestseller, The Widow of the South (2005) and two other novels in the Southern saga, A Separate Country (2009) and The Orphan Mother (2016). Hicks was born and raised in South Florida, moving to Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1974. He now lives at "Labor in Vain," his late-eighteenth-century log cabin near the Bingham Community.

Because of his writing, as well as his work in music, art, and historical preervation, Hicks made the #2 spot in the "Top 100 Reasons to Love Nashville." The list was featured in a 2015 issue of Nashville Lifestyles, which dubbed Hicks "Nashville's Master of Ceremonies."

Music and art
Hicks's interest in the arts are varied: over the years he has worked in music as a publisher and an artistic manager in both country and alternative-rock music. He has also been a partner in the B. B. King's Blues Clubs—located in Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, and Los Angeles—and continues to serve as the company's "Curator of Vibe."

As a lifelong art collector, Hicks was the first Tennessean ever to be listed among Art & Antiques's Top 100 Collectors in America. He focuses on artists such as Howard Finster and B.F. Perkins, as well as on different genres, such as Tennesseana and Southern Material Culture.

Hicks has also served as curator of the exhibition "Art of Tennessee" at the First Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The exhibition—first conceived at Hicks's kitchen table—was seven years in the making, opening in September 2003. Hicks also co-edited of the exhibition's award winning catalog, Art of Tennessee.

Historic preservation
Hicks has long been fascinated by the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864—a particularly bloody fight that weakened the Confederate's ability to win the Civil War. Hick's interest led him to found Franklin's Charge, an organization that saved what remained of the eastern flank of the battlefield—turning it into a public battlefield park. It was a massive project, considered "the largest battlefield reclamation in North American history" by the American Battlefield Protection Program.

By the end of 2005, Franklin's Charge had already raised over 5 million dollars toward this goal, surpassing anything ever achieved by other communities in America to preserve battlefield open space. As Jim Lighthizer, President of the Civil War Preservation Trust said, "There is no 'close second' in any community in America, to what Robert Hicks and Franklin's Charge has done in Franklin."

In addition to his work for the battlefield park, Hicks has served on the boards of the Historic Carnton Plantation (a focal point of the Franklin Battle), Tennessee State Museum, The Williamson County Historical Society, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He presently serves on the board of directors of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

Historical novels
Hicks's interest in the Franklin battlefield—and a chance meeting with Civil War historian and author Shelby Foote—inspired an idea for a book, eventually leading to The Widow of the South, his first novel, which was published in 2005. Hick's intent for the book was to bring national attention to those five bloody hours on the Franklin battlefield and the impact the battle had in remaking us a nation.

A Separate Country, Hicks's second novel published in 2009, takes place in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War. It is based on the life of John Bell Hood, one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army—and one of its most tragic figures.

In 2016, Hicks released his third book in the Civil War saga, The Orphan Mother. The story follows Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock—the "Widow of the South"—who has built a new life for herself as a midwife during the post-war Reconstruction Era.

Other writing
Hicks has written other works in addition to his novels. His first book, published in 2000, is a collaboration with French-American photographer Michel Arnaud: Nashville: the Pilgrims of Guitar Town. In 2008, he co-edited (with Justin Stelter and John Bohlinger) the story collection, A Guitar and A Pen: Short Stories and Story-Songs By Nashville Songwriters.

He has also written the introduction to two books on historic preservation authored by photographer Nell Dickerson, GONE: A Photographic Plea for Preservation and Porch Dogs.

Hicks's essays on regional history, southern material culture, furniture and music have appeared in numerous publications over the years. He also writes op-eds for the New York Times on contemporary politics in the South and is a regular contributor to Garden & Gun.

More
Hicks travels throughout the nation speaking on a variety of topics ranging from "Why The South Matters" to "The Importance of Fiction in Preserving History to Southern Material Culture" and "A Model for the Preservation of Historic Open Space for Every Community."

In January 2016 Hicks was a panelist and featured speaker at the third annual Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in California. Along with American historian H.W. Brands, Hicks took part in the panel discussion "The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Matters."

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, in 2014 Hicks released the first small batch of his bourbon whiskey Battlefield Bourbon. Each of the 1,864 bottles is numbered and signed by Hicks. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/2016.)