Contemporary Authors

• The Second Mrs. Hockaday: A Novel Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 2017

1. The second Mrs. Hockaday LCCN 2016007696 Type of material Book Personal name Rivers, Susan, 1954- author. Main title The second Mrs. Hockaday / Susan Rivers. Edition First Edition. Published/Produced Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2017. Description 264 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781616205812 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER PS3618.I859 S43 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Susan Rivers - http://www.susanriverswriter.com/about/

  Welcome!

  Language is my life; it has led me down paths I could not have predicted. In hindsight, I begin to understand how those paths have converged on a single road.

  I began as a playwright, receiving the Julie Harris Playwriting Award and the New York Drama League Award, working as an NEA Writer-in-Residence in San Francisco, and being named as a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for British and American Women Playwrights. I am a veteran of the Playwrights Festival at Sundance Institute for the Arts and the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference and have crossed the country working on productions and workshops of my plays.

  Fiction became my focus after starting my family and moving to the Carolinas in 1995. I hold an MFA in Fiction-writing from Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina and was awarded a Regional Artist Grant from the Arts and Sciences Council there. Since 2009, my husband and I have made our home in a small town in South Carolina, where stray animals and stories are thick on the ground. (None are turned away.)

  I teach English at a university in the upstate region of South Carolina and value my daily interactions with bright young men and women crafting their own relationships with language, heading down their own uncharted paths.

  Read my essay from the Algonquin Reader on the process of writing this book.

  Link to my Facebook site to see current news, updates and photos of my tour through the southeast, meeting readers and booksellers: Susan Jane Rivers.

• Huffington Post - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-second-mrs-hockaday-an-interview-with-susan-rivers_us_588fbb89e4b02c397c178ad2

  Brandi Megan Granett, Contributor
  I am an author, archer, and writing mentor.
  The Second Mrs. Hockaday: An Interview with Susan Rivers
  01/30/2017 05:24 pm ET

  I found myself swept away along with Placidia in her whirlwind wedding set against the back drop of the Civil War’s end in Susan Rivers’ The Second Mrs. Hockaday. It wasn’t until I finished the book that I stopped to consider how the story towed the lines of sympathies. Placidia was both slave owner and a supporter, a strong woman and a victim. The strength of Rivers’ writing is that these tensions drive the story rather than destroying it.

  To start, I’d love to know what drew you to Placidia?

  Placidia leapt to life in my imagination as soon as I read that the young woman actually indicted for concealing the death of the issue of her body refused to speak about what occurred while her husband was away with the infantry. She wouldn’t defend herself. Her experience of war had to be suppressed in 1865, but it was a galvanizing moment when I realized that I could provide a voice for her in 2017.

  What does it mean to you to create such a multi-layered picture of Southerners in this time period? What do you need to be sensitive to as a writer looking back?

  Over the years I’ve visited countless historical town homes and plantations in the south. I’ve been to so many museums, battle sites, former slave quarters and graveyards that I could become a docent if writing doesn’t work out. I’m struck every time by the complexity of southern history and culture, and how that complexity must be appreciated if you are intending to comprehend America’s history from its earliest days. I have stood on Thomas Jefferson’s south terrace at Monticello, looking past the blooming lilacs to his beloved “sea view,” marveling at how remarkably beautiful and hallowed the Virginian home place of our founding father is. At the same time, I have been conscious of the fact that the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States owned over 600 slaves during his lifetime. Genetic evidence clearly indicates that Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, beginning when she was just seventeen years old, but as a slave, this bi-racial girl would not have possessed the right to refuse the man who championed American liberty.

  When talking to readers’ groups about my novel, I often bring up examples like this one of the deeply paradoxical values built into southern identity. There’s a duality to almost every aspect of southern life that cannot be overlooked, and I’ve tried to explore this duality in The Second Mrs. Hockaday. Beauty is inseparable here from ugliness; kindness is intertwined with cruelty. The dark and the light, powerful and powerless, sacred and profane are inextricably bound together. In looking back at southern history and traditions, therefore, it’s important not to shine the Kleig light of 21st century sensibilities on the past and judge too narrowly, lest we too be judged. I try to place myself within the context of the time and the circumstances when I write, and by doing so, allow the particular character I inhabit to question her surroundings and test her own positions in a way that’s believable.

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  What section was the most difficult to write? Which one gave you the most pleasure or pride?

  In writing this story, I was required to put Placidia Hockaday through some very difficult experiences. I didn’t want to do it — I resisted for a time — but there was no other way. It’s been my experience that highly privileged people, like Placidia and her father at the start of the novel, can have compassionate, charitable natures, but they are rarely able to understand the struggles of under-privileged people on any meaningful level. The only way they can acquire true empathy, an understanding of what “common” people endure, is to experience it themselves. They must have their own bubbles burst, if only temporarily. I saw Placidia’s plight reflected in what happened to Kim Kardashian when she was bound and gagged in her Paris hotel room and robbed by an armed group of men. I’m fascinated with imagining what that moment must have been like for Kardashian when she realized that despite her wealth, status, beauty and celebrity, at the most essential level she is merely a human being. A woman. That realization must have been painful for her psychologically, as it apparently was for her husband, but perhaps the experience will ultimately deepen Kardashian’s view of her purpose in life, as it does for Placidia.

  This was one section of the novel where I felt intense closeness with my protagonist as I wrote it: being by her side and in her heart as she struggled to wrest meaning from what happened to her. Writing that scene I was like the ghost of the first Mrs. Hockaday: supportive but unseen. Maybe I was feeling a measure of guilt, as well, for having engineered her heartbreak. But my connection with her was powerful at that point, and I think it’s reflected in the clarity of her epiphany.

  You say “writing is hard, lonely work;” what draws you back to the page each time? What are you working on next?

  As soon as I signed the contract with my publisher and the semester ended in the spring of 2014, my husband and I drove to Oxford, Mississippi, to pay homage at Faulkner’s grave. Rowan Oak, his home, was a revelation to me. The privet was blooming everywhere with those tiny blossoms that smell like boiling caramel, and the cicadas were droning so loudly it sounded as if a spaceship was hovering over the woods. Upstairs in Faulkner’s room his boots were still standing by the fireplace. It made the hair stand up on my head to see the imprint of the great writer’s legs, body, posture — the weight he occupied in space — remaining in those two vestiges of his mortality.

  Somewhere in the house is a placard with these words from an address he delivered in 1957: “Of course, the first thing, the writer’s got to be demon-driven. He’s got to HAVE to write, he don’t know why, and sometimes he will wish that he didn’t have to, but he does.”

  Writing isn’t a choice for me; it’s a compulsion. I wrote The Second Mrs. Hockaday because I had to write it because this young woman’s voice refused to leave me alone. The heightened communion you can achieve with characters, with a landscape, with a set of circumstances — it’s something I can’t explain. It’s like an ecstatic state one enters into.

  The novel I’m writing now takes place in a South Carolina mill town very similar to the one in which I live. I’m working with an actual event that took place in this region in 1903: a flood on the Pacolet River that wiped out three mills and swept sixty-five millworkers to their deaths. This story began with a statement made to me by one of my students when I was exhorting him to make more of an effort in class. He told me his father always said to him: “Don’t worry about the mule, just load the wagon.” That’s mill town mentality, through and through. Your importance as an individual isn’t what matters — what matters is how much you contribute to your family. When I heard my student say this, however, it made me wonder: how’s that working for the mule?

• Go Triad - http://www.greensboro.com/go_triad/arts/books/a-true-crime-story-from-the-civil-war-era-sparked/article_f1a44076-73d8-5c8a-b07d-ff9a5862bdc2.html

  A true crime story from the Civil War era sparked Susan Rivers' new novel
  By Linda C. Brinson Special to the News & Record Jan 1, 2017 (0)
  Susan Rivers
  Buy Now
  Rivers
  Maybe, Susan Rivers said, the roots of “The Second Mrs. Hockaday,” her novel about a young wife whose Confederate husband was off at war, go back to her student days at Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs, Calif.

  A true crime story from Civil War days was the immediate catalyst, but the seeds had been planted decades earlier.

  The high school’s librarian, a transplant from Alabama, fired Rivers’ imagination about what it meant to be a Southern woman. “This was before ‘Steel Magnolias,’” Rivers said in a recent interview. “She told me all Southern women are schizophrenic. She said, ‘We have to be all soft and pretty and sweet and cream and sugar on the outside, and on the inside, we’ve got to be hard and tough and able to throttle a bear, so we’re crazy.’ “

  Other teachers at the small school opened her mind to different ways of thinking about “literature, storytelling, humanity — the way people approach life and family and love and ideas.

  “I do wonder if all that is what prepared me for living in the South,” she said, because the South — the Carolinas, specifically — is where she’s lived and written for the past 20 years.

  Before moving to North Carolina, Rivers had been active in theater in California. She acted and wrote plays, with considerable success. The playwriting grew out of frustration: “I wrote my first play at 24, when I was working with friends in the theater. I began to realize there just weren’t enough roles being written for women, for good actresses. The plays were all written by young, white men, and the women in them were all prostitutes or mothers,” she said.

  So she wrote “Maud Gonne Says No to the Poet,” about the woman who was the object of the poet William Butler Yeats’ long, unrequited love. A production of that play in San Francisco gave her career a boost.

  But after marrying a man who was a director and actor, Rivers began to see the theater world differently.

  “I realized that all of these brilliant actors that I worked with were going to AA meetings or calling their exes on the phone to talk to their children. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t stay in theater. I want a real life. I want a family.’ ”

  So she and her husband quit theater. She wrote nonfiction and short fiction. He went into the corporate world. “We wanted to be somewhere where things were done differently,” she said.

  A job offer for her husband in Wake County was as different as they could imagine, so in 1995 they moved to Wake Forest.

  “It was so beautiful — the woods, the birds in the morning, the lightning bugs, the seasons, the people,” she said. “It was so quiet, so sleepy. Our daughter was 7, and she loved it. I said, ‘Maybe we won’t fit in, but we have to have the experience.’ “

  Everything seemed great. They had their dream home. Their daughter loved her school.

  But after about a year, Hurricane Fran came through, devastating their neighborhood and their house. And her husband was downsized out of a job.

  He interviewed for a position in Silicon Valley, “but when he got off the phone and we looked at each other, we shook our heads and said we didn’t want to go back.”

  So he took a job in Charlotte, a “vibrant” community they enjoyed. Their daughter grew up and headed off to college at Chapel Hill, and Rivers went to school as well, earning an MFA in creative writing at Queens University.

  Then the recession of 2009 led to the closing of the plant where her husband worked, and the couple made one more move: to the town of Blacksburg in Cherokee County, S.C.

  One hot day in July 2014, she found herself in the History Room of a nearby library. She’d been trying to work on a novel about a middle-age woman alone on a farm during the Civil War, but the book didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  Then she found an obscure book of true stories about the Civil War era in Georgia, written by one Hu Daughtry, including the account of an inquest into a charge that Elizabeth Kennedy, the teenage wife of a Confederate soldier, had concealed the birth and death of her illegitimate child while her husband was away at war.

  Intrigued, Rivers sent for records from the relevant county. Her research unearthed theories about whom the father might have been and information that the charges were eventually dismissed. And, though Arthur Kennedy had filed for divorce, the couple reconciled.

  “Reading that just fired up my imagination, unlike with anything I’d ever written before,” she said. “I read that she never told anybody except perhaps her husband what happened to her, who fathered the child and how the child died. I thought, of course she couldn’t tell the story in 1865, but I’m going to tell it in 2016.

  “I had been looking for inspiration for that piece I had started, but I just set that aside and never went back to it,” she said.

  As she wrote, she drew on the many visits she and her family had made over the years to plantations and historical sites from Monticello to Charleston, S.C, and beyond, including Stagville State Historic Site, an antebellum plantation in Durham. The slave cabins, which were falling down when they visited, lingered in her mind.

  Though she was drawing on history, Rivers said, she wanted her story to feel like “now,” and that dictated the novel’s structure. “I wanted to bring home to the reader what it felt like for the people in the South to have an invading army — the fear, panic and feeling of being abandoned that a lot of women experienced.”

  The novel she’d been working on was in third person, but once she decided to tell the teenage wife’s story, “I jumped immediately on a less filtered way to get to her voice. I didn’t want to do just first person, because I knew I also wanted to deal with her descendants,” she said. Her extensive research into primary sources also influenced her, as did her theater background.

  So she created letters, journal entries and court documents to tell the story with the kind of “immediacy” found in a play, she said. No narrative, nothing, comes between what the characters have to say and the reader.

  She hopes that story will further understanding of the past, not just of the South, but of the United States. “The more I study, the more I realize that the history of the South is the history of this country, because of how we developed from our earliest beginnings,” she said.

  “We have to find a way to acknowledge that period and how these issues tore us apart, and then find a way back to some kind of reconciliation and progressive policy. … I just wish we could acknowledge that this is how the country was created. We have to view that, acknowledge it and just move on. We all belong here.”

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Print Marked Items
The Second Mrs. Hockaday
Melissa Brown
BookPage.
(Jan. 2017): p20.
COPYRIGHT 2017 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY
By Susan Rivers
Algonquin
$25.95, 272 pages
ISBN 9781616205812
Audio, eBook available
DEBUT FICTION
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
It's fitting for a Civil War­era story to be told in letters: The excruciating wait between each hoped­for missive is
mirrored in this debut novel's slow and gradual denouement. Author and playwright Susan Rivers employs not only
letters, but also diary entries and inquest reports to tell a story loosely based in fact. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday,
Placidia Fincher, young and newly wed to a major in the Confederate army, is jailed and accused of adultery and
infanticide. Her husband has been away for two years, adding to the intrigue. Only Placidia and her few slaves,
particularly one named Achilles, know what transpired.
As attested to in an author's note, Rivers' research has been thorough, and she writes convincingly in a mid 19th­century
style and mindset. She is adept at creating arresting imagery and constructs a stark contrast between the life of privilege
Placidia left and the life of struggle she comes to upon marrying the major, moving to his remote farm, and mothering
Charlie, his son by his first wife. After only two days as husband and wife, the major is called back to the front, and his
"fair girl" Placidia must run the farm and protect the homestead.
Passages relating to what Placidia and others suffer build slowly and unfold in painstaking detail, making them all the
more appalling. The cruelty in a world besieged by war is hard to fully comprehend. Men fought on battlefields, but
everyone at home was fighting, too­­to survive. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Rivers gives readers an illuminating
glimpse into a part of our country's past that still has repercussions in the present.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
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Brown, Melissa. "The Second Mrs. Hockaday." BookPage, Jan. 2017, p. 20. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475225435&it=r&asid=98239b0726cbafa7abcde79c4f2e681d.
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Susan Rivers: THE SECOND MRS.
HOCKADAY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Susan Rivers THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY Algonquin (Adult Fiction) 25.95 ISBN: 978­1­61620­581­2
Diary entries and letters form the basis of this novel about one woman’;s experiences during the Civil
War.Placidia Fincher is 17 when she marries Gryffth Hockaday, an enigmatic major in the Confederate army. She
spends two days as his wife before his redeployment, when she's left to run his estate and care for his child by an earlier
marriage. It’;s at least two years before they see each other again, and in that time, Placidia bears a child, and
the child dies. The circumstances of the child’;s birth and death are unknown in the community but much
remarked upon, mainly because Maj. Hockaday could not have been the father. When he finally returns from war, he
accuses his young wife of adultery and murder. This is the first novel by Rivers, an award­winning playwright, and
it’;s a remarkable one. She takes a collage approach to her storytelling, advancing the narrative through letters
between Placidia and a cousin, diary entries, and more letters, written decades later, which finally uncover the truth of
Placidia’;s circumstances. Rivers is adept at doling out information in teaspoon­sized increments, which makes
the book hard to put down. And while the Civil War–;era language can seem stiff in the early chapters, Rivers
seems to smooth out her syntax as the book goes along. There are moments of loveliness amid the struggles and
hardships of war, and Rivers is able to depict scenes of horror without exploiting her characters or manipulating her
readers. If this book is any indicator, Rivers is a promising talent and an adroit storyteller. Hopefully, this
won’;t be her only foray into fiction. A compulsively readable work that takes on the legacy of slavery in the
United States, the struggles specific to women, and the possibilities for empathy and forgiveness.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Susan Rivers: THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551460&it=r&asid=3684906ed4c118944a9218ac4ee5da4b.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
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Rivers, Susan: THE SECOND MRS.
HOCKADAY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rivers, Susan THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY Algonquin (Adult Fiction) $25.95 1, 10 ISBN: 978­1­61620­581­2
Diary entries and letters form the basis of this novel about one woman's experiences during the Civil War.Placidia
Fincher is 17 when she marries Gryffth Hockaday, an enigmatic major in the Confederate army. She spends two days as
his wife before his redeployment, when she's left to run his estate and care for his child by an earlier marriage. It's at
least two years before they see each other again, and in that time, Placidia bears a child, and the child dies. The
circumstances of the child's birth and death are unknown in the community but much remarked upon, mainly because
Maj. Hockaday could not have been the father. When he finally returns from war, he accuses his young wife of adultery
and murder. This is the first novel by Rivers, an award­winning playwright, and it's a remarkable one. She takes a
collage approach to her storytelling, advancing the narrative through letters between Placidia and a cousin, diary entries,
and more letters, written decades later, which finally uncover the truth of Placidia's circumstances. Rivers is adept at
doling out information in teaspoon­sized increments, which makes the book hard to put down. And while the Civil Warera
language can seem stiff in the early chapters, Rivers seems to smooth out her syntax as the book goes along. There
are moments of loveliness amid the struggles and hardships of war, and Rivers is able to depict scenes of horror without
exploiting her characters or manipulating her readers. If this book is any indicator, Rivers is a promising talent and an
adroit storyteller. Hopefully, this won't be her only foray into fiction. A compulsively readable work that takes on the
legacy of slavery in the United States, the struggles specific to women, and the possibilities for empathy and
forgiveness.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Rivers, Susan: THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329210&it=r&asid=959bacd9ebd66e7a16c8fa178a863fc8.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
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The Second Mrs. Hockaday
Publishers Weekly.
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p96.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Second Mrs. Hockaday
Susan Rivers. Algonquin, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978­1­61620­581­2
Based on true events, Rivers's epistolary historical novel is a stirring Civil War­­era version of The Scarlet Letter.
Placidia Fincher is 17 when she marries Confederate Major Gryffth Hockaday in April 1863, after knowing him for just
a handful of hours. Two days after their wedding, Gryffth is called to fight again, and he doesn't return from the war to
his South Carolina farm for nearly two years. When he does, he discovers that during his absence, his wife had carried
another man's child, who was born and died of mysterious causes right before Gryffth's return. To protect the innocent
parties close to her, Placidia refuses to give up any information about the incident, even after a heartbroken Gryffth
orders a court hearing for infanticide. She bears all of the weight of this secret, until her diary falls into the wrong hands.
Told through gripping, suspenseful letters, court documents, and diary entries, Rivers's story spans three decades to
show the rippling effects of buried secrets, when the Hockadays and future generations must learn to overcome the
damage this secret and the war have done to all the families involved. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Second Mrs. Hockaday." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 96. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166565&it=r&asid=fe162ce8216e16a824a96d7d8711ebbc.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
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Second wives
Library Journal.
141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p94.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Jefferies, Dinah. The Tea Planter's Wife. Crown. Sept. 2016.432p. ISBN 9780451495976. $26; ebk. ISBN
9780451495990. F
A best seller in Britain and set in 1920s Ceylon (Sri Lanka today), Jefferies's (The Separation) novel is the spellbinding
tale of a young bride who travels to an exotic land and winds up completely lost in the unfamiliar. Nineteen­year­old
Gwen married Laurence in England and has followed him to his tea plantation. Though mesmerized by the beauty of the
country, she soon struggles with the unaccustomed isolation. Her new husband is strangely distant, spending most of his
time at work, and his relationship with a beautiful American businesswoman makes Gwen insecure. Verity, Laurence's
spoiled younger sister, is jealous of Gwen's place as mistress of the house and will do anything to drive a wedge
between the couple. The plantation itself holds undercurrents of danger with unrest brewing among the native workers.
Most mysterious and troubling is that no one is willing to talk about Laurence's first wife and the circumstances of her
death. Soon, Gwen is questioning her own choices and will have to make a devastating decision to save her marriage
and maybe her life. VERDICT This atmospheric and suspenseful novel is reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's classic
Rebecca and will enthrall fans of gothic romances. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16; September LibraryReads Pick.]­­
Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Rivers, Susan. The Second Mrs. Hockaday. Algonquin. Jan. 2017.256p. ISBN 9781616205812. $25.95; ebk. ISBN
9781616206512. F
Placidia (Dia) Fincher Hockaday shares two days with her new husband, Maj. Gryffth Hockaday, before he leaves to
fight in the Civil War. During the second year of his absence, Dia gives birth to a child. The baby's father, and the
infant's subsequent fate, are at the center of the scandal that opens this first novel. Largely told through letters and diary
entries, the narration, initially slow paced, accelerates as the story evolves and the protagonists' roles in the scandal
unfold. Most of the story line is set against the stark realities of wartime survival, except for an awkward middle section
that jumps to a future generation of characters trying to unravel the mystery of Dia. Once reoriented to the past, readers
will find that, as with all wartime tales, brutality toward women and slaves occurs with depressing frequency.
VERDICT Fans of Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders and Sarah Blake's The Postmistress will enjoy this solid
historical novel, which is also a good choice for book clubs, as Dia's motivations for her actions will yield great
discussions.­­Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Second wives." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044848&it=r&asid=c4d0369beb4d3b22617c0238041c472b.
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The Second Mrs. Hockaday
Jen Baker
Booklist.
112.21 (July 1, 2016): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Second Mrs. Hockaday. By Susan Rivers. Jan. 2017. 256p. Algonquin, $25.95 (9781616205812).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
How did southern women on isolated farms survive the Civil War? In her debut novel, Rivers brings the stark realities
of history to life through the story of a privileged teenager who weds in haste. Only two days after marrying Placidia,
Confederate Major Hockaday is called to war, leaving his young wife alone to run the farm in Holland County, South
Carolina; care for his two­year­old son, Charlie; and manage the slaves­­none of which she's equipped to do. Early in
the narrative, told from multiple perspectives, we learn that Placidia becomes pregnant long after the major's departure,
that the baby dies, and that she goes to jail for killing the child. The mystery of what happens spins out in a whiteknuckle
tale of survival, told through letters, court records, and, toward the book's end, Placidia's diary, found 30 years
later. With language evocative of the South ("craggy as a shagbark stump") and taut, almost unbearable suspense,
dramatized by characters readers will swear they know, this galvanizing historical portrait of courage, determination,
and abiding love mesmerizes and shocks. Similar in tone and descriptive flow to Charles Fraziers Cold Mountain (1997)
and with the compelling narratives found in Robert Hicks' The Widow of the South (2005).­­Jen Baker
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Baker, Jen. "The Second Mrs. Hockaday." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459889003&it=r&asid=44661a5a7dbd937802601412cd39d01d.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459889003

Brown, Melissa. "The Second Mrs. Hockaday." BookPage, Jan. 2017, p. 20. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475225435&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "Susan Rivers: THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551460&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "Rivers, Susan: THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329210&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "The Second Mrs. Hockaday." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 96. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166565&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "Second wives." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044848&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. Baker, Jen. "The Second Mrs. Hockaday." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459889003&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017.

• Princeton Book Review
  http://www.princetonbookreview.com/book_pages/discussion/second-mrs-hockaday.php
  Word count: 478

  The Second Mrs. Hockaday
  by Susan Rivers

  PBR Book Review:Based on true events, an engaging and well researched story with amazing historical perspective. It gives life to the behind the scene events of the Civil War. Placidia is young, newly married and left to tend her husband’s farm while he is off fighting. She rises beautifully to the challenges of living in near isolation, on a small rural farm, with the constant threat of intruders. The struggles of war from the perspective of those left at home, is real. So is the danger for women on their own. When her husband finally returns after years away, he discovers she has given birth during his absence and that the child did not survive. He proceeds to have his wife taken into custody on charges of murder. As a reader, you are not yet aware of the circumstances of this pregnancy, but still vehemently feel the injustice of it. As the book moves along, you gradually learn the truth of Placidia’s pregnancy. The book is written in the form of letters, diary entries, and court documents which is very effective. Once you allow time to become attached to the characters, the story and mystery of it all will keep you reading. There are some very memorable and poignant moments in this book. Definitely recommend for historical fiction lovers. Not sure if the mystery aspect of this story is strong enough for mystery lovers, but an excellent choice for book clubs.

  Book Club Talking Points: This book is about perseverance and determination. Most Civil War books focus on the battle, this one shows the hardships endured by the women left behind and the courage and strength it took to survive. Slavery still existed so there is plenty to talk about on that front; the way they are treated, babies born to slaves fathered by elite white men and more importantly, did we really buy and sell human beings and afford these individuals no human rights? Placidia is a complex character. Her motivations for certain actions will definitely stir some conversation as well as the circumstances of her pregnancy and marriage. Readers will also have some strong feeling about Placidia’s husband, Major Hockaday and his actions; some not in a good way.

  | More Buy From Amazon.com

  About this book:
  An Indie Next pick for January 2017 - one of 20 books chosen by booksellers across the country!
  A Library Reads Pick for January 2017 - one of 10 books chosen by library staffers across the country!
  An Okra Pick for Winter 2017 -- one of 12 books chosen by southern independent booksellers!

  *Author Website: http://www.susanriverswriter.com

  *Other Books by Same Author: Debut novel - Susan Rivers began her writing career as a playwright.

• Atticus Review
  https://atticusreview.org/beautiful-possibilities-review-second-mrs-hockaday-susan-rivers/
  Word count: 769

  Beautiful Possibilities: A Review of The Second Mrs. Hockaday, by Susan Rivers 0
  BY EVA RACZKA ON FEBRUARY 27, 2017 BOOK REVIEWS
  The Second Mrs. Hockaday
  By Susan Rivers
  Algonquin Books, January 10, 2017
  272 pages, $19.19
  Reviewed by Eva Raczka

  Susan Rivers’ novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday, is a coming of age tale set during the Civil War. A young bride, Placidia, must learn to run a farm in South Carolina while her new husband, the Confederate Major Hockaday, returns to the battlefield. Written as an epistolary novel in three parts, the prose is vibrant, with turns of satisfying Southern descriptions, “the darkness was creeping upwards with its cool breath and sugar scents.”

  Letter-writing, diary entries, reports–these suit Ms. Rivers’ novel; it has the feeling of deferred intimacy, apt for the Civil War, a time when letters went unanswered and unconfirmed. Long stretches could pass before communication was re-established and in this age of instant gratification, this novel refreshes the keen longing and desire that comes with waiting. In a letter to her cousin, Placidia states, “I believed him, you understand. About marriage being a refuge. I want to believe him still. But lifetimes have passed since I woke up beside my husband. And I can no longer claim to be cherished.”

  Throughout her letters, clues are given as to a terrible and monstrous event during this time on the farm. Placidia withholds her secret to save others who were involved, but withholding it also from the reader creates some distance from the anguish she recounts. This distance made it hard to feel empathetic, though I believe Ms. Rivers did this purposefully in an attempt to have the reader relate to Major Hockaday, who is also kept in the dark. It is a mostly successful attempt, though I couldn’t help but wonder if the story would hold more power if I knew what had happened right away.

  While withholding information from the reader is effective in prolonging the reading, I wanted to find out what happened and why this mystery was important to the characters. I find that if I am allowed into the letters and diary entries of Placidia, I wanted to be in her head as well, which means knowing all of the information that she knows. I would empathize much more with her character if I knew everything.

  The reader finally discovers the real story behind Placidia’s letters in the form of her diary. The final diary entries are written on the back of pictures in a copy of David Copperfield and are illuminating, providing the true narrative. The reader follows her through the start of her marriage and life on the farm to an account of what happened to her before her beloved Major returned home. Encountering the trials that come with running a farm through natural disaster, thieves, and those who target a woman living alone, Placidia writes her diary with the maturity and wherewithal of a person who has witnessed and participated in horrific experiences, but her character is not broken or bitter.

  The diary entries are revealed through her son’s, Achilles, decision to read them and share them. Several decisions are made in this novel, and hard ones: the decision to marry and leave home, the decision to read or not to read a personal diary containing hard truths, the decision to confront a difficult and ugly past or to leave it alone and ignore it. These choices are universal in scope, and I felt the closest to the characters making these leaps into the unknown. They know that their actions will have a major impact, but they choose bravely to make those choices and accept the consequences.

  Susan Rivers lets her characters make these hard decisions and imagines the arc of how these decisions change the direction of a life. This is what ultimately sits after reading The Second Mrs. Hockaday, the beautiful possibilities that she has created in this novel, still relevant today. The suffering of the past can inform the actions of generations, and we can face the mistakes made in the past, or ignore them. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Ms. Rivers asks the reader to face grief head-on.

  In a stirring scene at the end of the novel, the Major says, “How can I live knowing what you have endured? How can I live knowing that I let it happen?” and Placidia says, “The answer is: we shall have to learn.”

  Like this:

• San Francisco Book Review
  https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/product/the-second-mrs-hockaday-a-novel/
  Word count: 263

  The Second Mrs. Hockaday: A Novel
  We rated this book:
  $25.95

  Placidia Fincher becomes The Second Mrs. Hockaday when she is only seventeen and after meeting her new husband the day before. The Civil War is going on, and her husband serves in the Confederate Army. His first wife has just died, leaving a small child for Placidia to raise. After only two days of marriage, her husband is called back to his regiment, and she is left alone to care for a child that is not hers and their farm, with only some servants to help her. Her husband returns two years later to find his wife has had a child and it died. He immediately asks for an inquest to try to figure out how is wife could have committed such a crime in his absence.

  In her research, Susan Rivers came upon a case like this, and this story is her fictionalization of that account. It is told through letters and diary entries, giving it a more intimate feel, as if you are seeing a side to this story you wouldn’t normally get to if you had just heard about the crime. Placidia comes across as a very strong woman who has to grow up quite quickly. I can’t imagine being that young and being isolated with so much responsibility and in a time of war. Things turn out differently than you might expect. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and could not put it down.

  Reviewed By: Christina Boswell

• Booklist Online
  https://www.booklistonline.com/The-Second-Mrs-Hockaday-Susan-Rivers/pid=8130642
  Word count: 235

  The Second Mrs. Hockaday.
  Rivers, Susan (author).
  Jan. 2017. 256p. Algonquin, hardcover, $25.95 (9781616205812).
  REVIEW.
  First published July, 2016 (Booklist).

  How did southern women on isolated farms survive the Civil War? In her debut novel, Rivers brings the stark realities of history to life through the story of a privileged teenager who weds in haste. Only two days after marrying Placidia, Confederate Major Hockaday is called to war, leaving his young wife alone to run the farm in Holland County, South Carolina; care for his two-year-old son, Charlie; and manage the slaves—none of which she’s equipped to do. Early in the narrative, told from multiple perspectives, we learn that Placidia becomes pregnant long after the major’s departure, that the baby dies, and that she goes to jail for killing the child. The mystery of what happens spins out in a white-knuckle tale of survival, told through letters, court records, and, toward the book’s end, Placidia’s diary, found 30 years later. With language evocative of the South (“craggy as a shagbark stump”) and taut, almost unbearable suspense, dramatized by characters readers will swear they know, this galvanizing historical portrait of courage, determination, and abiding love mesmerizes and shocks. Similar in tone and descriptive flow to Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (1997) and with the compelling narratives found in Robert Hicks’ The Widow of the South (2005).

  — Jen Baker

• Roanoke Times
  http://www.roanoke.com/arts_and_entertainment/books/book-review-civil-war-takes-toll-on-young-wife-in/article_eb3a837d-0c83-5448-9706-e6fced6d660d.html
  Word count: 710

  Book review: Civil War takes toll on young wife in 'The Second Mrs. Hockaday'
  By Suzanne Wardle suzanne.wardle@roanoke.com 981-3340 Jan 16, 2017 (0)
  The Second Mrs. Hockaday
  Algonquin Books. 272 pages. $25.95.
  Much is written about the war part of the Civil War — generals, politicians, tactics and movements. The action on the field was important, but so was life away from it. Women on the home front did not escape the ardors of war; they worked hard to keep their families, farms, businesses and themselves going during uncertain times. Susan Rivers provides a window into such life in her novel “The Second Mrs. Hockaday.”

  The Civil War is well under way in 1863, but in South Carolina, Placidia Fincher enjoys a stable life of “love and privilege and pony rides.” She does not care much for her stepmother and stepsiblings, but she is the pet of her father, who embraces her high spirits and liveliness. It’s the day before her stepsister’s wedding that she meets Maj. Gryffth Hockaday, at her father’s farm to buy a mule. Their attraction is immediate; the major proposes after two days and, with her father’s blessing and words of caution, Dia moves to the major’s home in Holland County.

  Their time together is brief. Griff is called back to war and soon is fighting in Chancellorsville, Virginia. Dia is left to run the farm and everything that entails — crops, livestock and slaves — and raise Charlie, Griff’s toddler from his first marriage. It’s a daunting task for an inexperienced 17-year-old. Dia struggles for more than two years until Griff comes home the summer of 1865. On the way, he hears a terrible rumor: His wife gave birth and the baby is dead.

  Dia confirms the story. Days later she is in jail. And that is where the story of the second Mrs. Hockaday begins.

  The book follows a nonlinear format, jumping around in time and using different methods to tell the story. Dia’s tale unfolds through correspondence with her cousin Millie, official Holland County judicial inquests, Dia’s diary and letters between members of the second generation of the Fincher/Hockaday families. The sudden shifts between formats initially are discombobulating, especially when Rivers suddenly introduces the second generation and uses names that are familiar yet in an unfamiliar context.

  It is worth pushing through those moments of confusion to resolve the mystery. Rivers spins out the drama of Dia and her ill-fated newborn, hinting at possible fathers — her stepsister’s husband, a blue-eyed slave, bandits who swoop down on the unprotected farm. Dia has little to say in her own defense: “I could not explain the baby’s manner of death, not knowing it myself, and I was prevented from relating to him [her husband] certain details about the child’s conception, notably the identity of the man involved, due to a pact forged with my Maker on that occasion and to a solemn promise made to someone who risked his own life to aid me when I would surely have died without assistance.”

  This mystery overlays the story of life during the Civil War. Like many women, Dia fears for her husband, but the war leaves her vulnerable, too. Floods and criminals threaten her livelihood. She struggles without slaves who abandon the farm, convinced their own freedom is imminent. Lonely and anxious, her companions are her diary and the imagined presence of the first Mrs. Hockaday.

  Holland County does not exist, though plenty of the Civil War references are to real places and events. Dia and Griff also are fictitious though inspired by real people, Rivers says — Elizabeth and Arthur Kennedy of Georgia, whose “painful legal dealings” are outlined in “Confederate Tales of Candler and Connected Counties” by Hu Daughtry. History buffs will recognize what’s real and read with interest about the inspirations for the fiction.

  For people whose knowledge of history is a little more sketchy, the story is enough. The psychological and physical tolls of war, especially on women, come alive in Rivers’ novel in the piteous yet gritty woman who is the second Mrs. Hockaday.

• Yakima Herald
  http://www.yakimaherald.com/entertainment/book-scene-civil-war-era-the-second-mrs-hockaday-asks/article_fc27f518-dda3-11e6-81de-67dd892fadb7.html
  Word count: 511

  Book Scene: Civil War-era 'The Second Mrs. Hockaday' asks deep questions
  By Emily Ring, for On magazine Jan 18, 2017 (0)
  second mrs hockaday
  (courtesy photo)
  YAKIMA, Wash. -- There’s something about epistolary novels. Maybe it’s the sense of voyeurism that comes from reading someone else’s (fictional) letters. Maybe it’s the mysteries that arise from reading between the lines, from things half-said or not said at all.

  Either way, in the right hands, the format can lend a story urgency, tension and intrigue, and in her debut novel, “The Second Mrs. Hockaday,” Susan Rivers artfully weaves and unravels a story that is full of all three.

  The titular second Mrs. Hockaday is 17-year-old Placidia Fincher, a naïve Southern belle who impulsively accepts a marriage proposal from a much-older Confederate widower after a very brief acquaintance. They enjoy a day and a half of wedded bliss, then Major Hockaday is called back into battle, and Placidia is left to care for his infant son, his farm and his slaves.

  Through letters, journal entries and court documents, we learn of the horrors that unfold for both of them, on the home front and the battlefront, horrors that culminate when Major Hockaday returns home two years later to find that his wife has become pregnant, long after his departure, and given birth to a baby that has died under suspicious circumstances. Placidia’s refusal to reveal the identity of the baby’s father, and the mystery that surrounds its fate, plunges the couple into a nightmare that both threatens and defines the bonds that hold them together.

  I suppose it would be fair to call “The Second Mrs. Hockaday” a mystery novel. After all, there’s a clearly defined question at the center of the story: Was a crime committed, and if so, who committed it? I was captivated by this mystery and couldn’t stop reading until I had the answer.

  But there are other questions, deeper, moral questions of ownership, responsibility, righteousness and decency that reverberate throughout the story. Perhaps these questions end up overshadowing the simple mystery of who fathered Placidia’s baby and what became of it. The implications of these questions shake the foundations upon which Placidia and her husband have built their life, the Confederacy itself, and the answers reshape their world.

  In the end, “The Second Mrs. Hockaday” is a gritty, heartbreaking, clear-eyed story of hard-won love and survival. It harkens, unflinchingly, to one of the darkest times in American history, but it also reminds us that we each have the right to uphold our own morals, no matter what is forced upon us by others, even when we have no other rights at all.

  • “The Second Mrs. Hockaday” by Susan Rivers was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill this month. It retails for $25.95.

  • Emily Ring works for Inklings Bookshop. She and other Inklings staffers review books in this space every week.

• Hattiesburg American
  http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/life/books/2017/02/26/book-review-second-mrs-hockaday/98180038/
  Word count: 754

  Book review: 'The Second Mrs. Hockaday'
  Zadie Buehrle, Special to USA TODAY NETWORK - Mississippi 8:30 a.m. CT Feb. 26, 2017
  636232305870544085-Rivers-Second-HC-HR-rev.jpg
  (Photo: Book jacket/Special to The Clarion-Ledger)
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  In her novel "The Second Mrs. Hockaday" (Algonquin Books), Susan Rivers presents the tale of Placidia Fincher, a young woman during the difficult years of the Civil War in the South. Rivers expertly seasons the novel with historical details that engross readers in the struggles of leading a life during the many tragic aspects of the war.

  Placidia’s story is told through a series of letters, official inquiries and several journal entries, which Rivers has strung together to weave a beautiful tale of hardship and redemption.

  "The Second Mrs. Hockaday" begins with Placidia’s first letter, from which she mentions how she has been arrested for infidelity and the possible murder of an illegitimate child, and is currently awaiting trial. Her cousin Mildred, the recipient of most of the letters and Placidia’s only confidant, pleads that Placidia hand over all the details surrounding her plight in hopes that there might be some evidence that could save her. However, Placidia refuses. She hints several times that there are some persons in need of protection, and the only protection she can offer them is silence.

  Placidia’s story truly takes shape through this correspondence. She tells of the day she first laid eyes on Major Gryffth Hockaday, a guest at Placidia’s stepbrother’s wedding. They were infatuated with one another the moment they met. The Major, after proving himself to be a respectable, hardworking, and moral man, asks Placidia’s father if he can marry her only two days after their first meeting. The two are united, and set out to establish a life together.

  Griff brings Placidia to his homestead at Holland Creek — 300 acres of farmland — and to a young son from his previous marriage (his late-wife died of pneumonia). Though Placidia is overwhelmed by the first hours of marriage, a new family, unfamiliar home, and all the responsibilities that come with running a household, she is also determined to succeed. With Griff at her side, she could learn any and all skills presented to her.

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  Neither of the newlyweds expected to be separated in the first few days together. Yet, Griff is called back to the battlefield, forcing him to leave Placidia alone in unfamiliar territory. As intimidating as the prospect of such distance between them is, they are still confident that things will ultimately be all right. Neither of them are prepared for the tragedy that will strike their home and their relationship, nor the innocence that would be lost in the months to come.

  Griff must come to terms with the horrors he witnesses on the battlefield, while Placidia — still young and terribly inexperienced — faces the struggles of leading a home alone. Ultimately, both Hockadays are thrown into their own battle of survival against the brutality of man, in two very different yet devastating ways.

  Placidia reveals very little about her past in her letters to Mildred and her husband, but records many important notes in her personal journal. It is not until her journal entries are found that puzzle pieces begin to fall into place and a full story begins to take form. By the last few pages, everything becomes painfully clear, and yet hope shines through even the darkest of moments. It would be an injustice to the story to reveal its conclusion, but the readers will be turning pages feverishly to learn Placidia’s fate.

  Rivers has masterfully told a story of the loss of human innocence as well as the forgiveness and understanding it takes to survive in cold and unfair world. Each entry in the novel is captivating, pulling at the reader’s heartstrings with moments of bliss and heartbreak, while also teasing them with small doses of details with the promise of a satisfying reveal.

  Rivers shows us a world past that rings true to the readers of today, a world in which circumstances are more than they first appear, the ties of loyalty are strong, and all acts of courage are great — no matter the size.

  Zadie Buehrle, a native Californian, is a senior creative writing and English double major at Belhaven University.

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