The hornet's nest : a novel of the Revolutionary War

by Jimmy Carter

Other authorsAmy Hill (Designer)
Paperback, 2004

Status

Available

Call number

A CAR

Publication

New York : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004.

ISBN

0743255445 / 9780743255448

Description

A novel of the American South during the Revolutionary War follows Ethan Pratt, his wife Epsey, and their neighbors, Kindred and Mavis Morris, as they become caught up in the conflict and the problems confronting local Indian tribes.

User reviews

LibraryThing member bkswrites
Picked up the Simon & Schuster audio book on clearance (read by Edward herrmann), and didn't manage to finish it. It sort of gets bogged down in the military details (including the torture/execution details), which I guess shouldn't surprise me, being by a military/political male. But it did really
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disappoint me in failure to understand its women characters or even round them out. They didn't even have 'steel magnolia' depth. I'm glad this man I admire tried, but I wish he could have tried a little harder.
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LibraryThing member sharonk21
Not bad for a first-time historical novelist. Also shows how you can use your own family's genealogy as the basis for a historical novel. I read this as a companion piece to E. L. Doctorow's "The March." "The March" covers the civil war in the same three states as Carter's historical novel about
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the revolutionary war. My own many-great grandfather fought in the revolutionary war in North Carolina and was killed by Loyalists in a reprisal raid of his home much like the raids described by Carter. The revolutionary war in the South was much different than that in the North. Most of the British Army in the South was recruited from local Loyalists and it led to a situation of neighbor against neighbor not at all unlike what is going on in Iraq today.
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LibraryThing member witchyrichy
Historically accurate account of a time period and geographical area that I didn't know much about. The fiction is almost an after thought, kind of like examples to illustrate a very interesting history lecture.
LibraryThing member antiqueart
ex President Carter, fiction of life in Ga during the Revolution
LibraryThing member Athenable
This book starts out pretty well but then descends into a muddle of too many characters and dry military facts.
LibraryThing member fulner
Carter manages a mass of characters who struggle to survive the revolutionary war. From wives hoping to be reunited with husbands, to Quakes and other pacifists trying to keep peace at all cost, to those who "just want to be left alone" and Torries loyal to the crown and tarred and feather for
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their belief (and latter return the favor 100 times over). And of course Indians playing the game best they can in hopes of one day returning to the ways of the ancestors.

This audio book was "interesting." I really enjoyed Jimmy Carter's non-fiction work, so this lead me to try out his one fiction writing.

This piece of historical fiction is attempted to be written like his non-fiction pieces, sort of in a memories mode. This is odd for fiction, as it is trying to get decades worth of fictional information into a story only several hours long. Also unlike most fiction works, there is not real central character, the story jumps back and forth, and its likely readable as such in print form, but much more hard to follow in audio only.

Also this story, like many fiction writings of the 21st century, has far too many unnecessary sexual sense written in it. Add to that image, the idea that this is written not only by an old white man, but one who used to be the POTUS. ITs just weird.

But the story was interesting and worth following, and like all good historical fiction made me want to learn more about the facts behind it, to determine how much was history and how much was fiction. Often I felt more like I was hearing a civil war story than a revolutionary store, with a frequent thought that for an Georgian in his 70s the Civil War is still not far enough that we can talk about it candidly, but then again I'm reminded that if Washington would have lost, our Revolutionary war may well have been referred to as the British Civil War.
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LibraryThing member kerns222
he cannot write!
LibraryThing member ValerieAndBooks
Picked up this historical fiction by Jimmy Carter because of my interest in the Revolutionary War. Carter focuses on the happenings in the American South, particularly Georgia (not surprisingly, as we all know he hails from there). In spite of the incredibly stilted speech between characters, I
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stuck with this one because Carter includes a lot of background information of actual events and I have less knowledge of the American Revolution events in the South compared to, say, Boston or Philadelphia. But it was a slog to read -- as much as I admire Jimmy Carter the person and his earnestness -- and now am in search of actual non-fiction works to learn more.
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Call number

A CAR

Barcode

6128
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