A strange and unusual novel, told through the eyes and words of an imaginary 99-yearold widow whose husband had been that proverbial thing, the Last Surviving Confederate Soldier. She is, naturally, reliving the past, but that past does not merely include the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, it encompasses subsequent Southern history up to recent decades. The novel is very long (over 700 pages) and densely told, in a style which lies roughly halfway between narrative or reminiscence and broken, stream-of-consciousness inner monologue. The sheer length, the molasses-like density and the relentless Southern dialect are all formidable obstacles, even deterrents, but there is an overall imaginative energy which makes the work impressive, and its curious flavour lingers in the memory.