Homeland: A Novel

By Barbara Hambly

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 by friendship and hope.

As brother turns against brother in the bloodbath of the Civil War, two young women sacrifice everything but their friendship. Susanna Ashford is the Southerner, living on a plantation surrounded by scarred and blood-soaked battlefields. Cora Poole is the Northerner, on an isolated Maine island, her beloved husband fighting for the Confederacy. Through the letters the two women exchange, they speak of the ordeal of a familiar world torn apart by tragedy. And yet their unique friendship will help mend the fabric of a ravaged nation.

The two women write about books and art, about loss and longing, about their future and the future of their country. About love. About being a woman in nineteenth-century America. About the triumphant resilience of the human spirit.

Their voices and their stories are delineated in indomitable prose by an award-winning writer who captures in intimate detail a singular moment in time. In Homeland, Barbara Hambly takes readers on a unique odyssey across a landscape treacherous with hardship and hatred. She paints a passionate masterpiece of a friendship that not only transforms our understanding of the most heart-wrenching era of American history but celebrates the power of women to change their world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 25, 2009
• ISBN: 9780553906875

Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly was born in San Diego. Her interest in fantasy began with reading The Wizard of Oz at an early age and has continued ever since. She attended the University of California, Riverside, specialising in medieval history and then spent a year at the University at Bordeaux in Southern France as a teaching and research assistant. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Homeland

[schmapp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written during the Civil War this book really captured me. The letters exchanged between these friends show the perils and difficulties of war. I enjoyed this book and the style of the writing.

[tshrope · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Homeland is primarily about friendship, specifically between two women; Cora living in ME, and Susanna living in TN during the Civil War, but it is also about the relationships we form with characters from books and how books become some of our most coveted friendships.

The story is written in epistle form, with most of the letters written between the two women (many not sent due to lack of mail service, others because of content, and some lost en route). Their letters document the war and the trials and tribulations they must face to endure it. They give each other encouragement and support, even if only imaginary at times since many of their letters are not sent.

Hambly does a good job of portraying the many hardships faced by both sides in the war, and the fact that both sides had resisters, and many were not supportive of the side they were “supposed to be on,” something that is often overlooked in books about the Civil War.

Once the war begins they live very isolated lives, especially Cora, the woman who lives on the small ME Island and has been shunned by neighbors, friends and even her sister-in-law because her husband goes back to his home state of TN to fight for the South. In the South most of Susanna’s friends and neighbors have fled leaving her with only her bleeding-heart confederate sister and the militia with whom to contend. So without much company to interact with they each seek solace and escape in reading novels, although Susanna has to resort to remembering books since she has none physically to read anymore. Hambly pays tribute to classic authors such as Austen, Dickens, Thackery, Homer, Hugo, Cervantes, and Swift among many others. Cora and Susanna talked about the characters as knowingly as friends, questioned their motives and their character at times, and wondered aloud about what happened to them after the story officially ended. They also relate their own situations and reactions to those of characters in the novels, which gives them a sense of validation.

I don’t generally read a lot of “chick lit” but this was better than most and I especially enjoyed her literary allusions which made me remember a lot of my old “friends” whom I haven’t thought about in awhile.

[trishrope · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Homeland is primarily about friendship, specifically between two women; Cora living in ME, and Susanna living in TN during the Civil War, but it is also about the relationships we form with characters from books and how books become some of our most coveted friendships.

The story is written in epistle form, with most of the letters written between the two women (many not sent due to lack of mail service, others because of content, and some lost en route). Their letters document the war and the trials and tribulations they must face to endure it. They give each other encouragement and support, even if only imaginary at times since many of their letters are not sent.

Hambly does a good job of portraying the many hardships faced by both sides in the war, and the fact that both sides had resisters, and many were not supportive of the side they were “supposed to be on,” something that is often overlooked in books about the Civil War.

Once the war begins they live very isolated lives, especially Cora, the woman who lives on the small ME Island and has been shunned by neighbors, friends and even her sister-in-law because her husband goes back to his home state of TN to fight for the South. In the South most of Susanna’s friends and neighbors have fled leaving her with only her bleeding-heart confederate sister and the militia with whom to contend. So without much company to interact with they each seek solace and escape in reading novels, although Susanna has to resort to remembering books since she has none physically to read anymore. Hambly pays tribute to classic authors such as Austen, Dickens, Thackery, Homer, Hugo, Cervantes, and Swift among many others. Cora and Susanna talked about the characters as knowingly as friends, questioned their motives and their character at times, and wondered aloud about what happened to them after the story officially ended. They also relate their own situations and reactions to those of characters in the novels, which gives them a sense of validation.

I don’t generally read a lot of “chick lit” but this was better than most and I especially enjoyed her literary allusions which made me remember a lot of my old “friends” whom I haven’t thought about in awhile.