Teaser Tuesday: A Separate Country

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week comes from A Separate Country, by Robert Hicks.

From Publisher’s Weekly–

Starred Review. Hicks follows his bestselling The Widow of the South with the grand, ripped-from-the-dusty-archives epic of Confederate general John Bell Hood. The story begins with Hood, on his deathbed with yellow fever, dispersing a stack of papers to former war nemesis Eli Griffin, urging him to publish the general’s secret memoir. Hood’s story picks up in 1878 as he, nearly broke, reflects on the past 10 years’ dwindling fortunes. Now, with an artificial leg, a bum arm and nearly no money, he and his wife, Anna Marie, live in diminished circumstances in New Orleans. Over time, their once passionate relationship grows mundane as Hood watched the years wrench devilry and lust and joy from her face. Things are also complicated by the violent death of Anna Marie’s best friend and the reappearance of former comrade Sebastien Lemerle, who holds a nasty secret he holds about Hood’s past. Meanwhile, Hood’s marriage and business failures pale in comparison to the yellow fever epidemic that decimates the area. Hicks’s stunning narrative volleys between Hood, Anna Marie and Eli, each offering variety and texture to a story saturated in Southern gallantry and rich American history.

Life is pain. If no pain, there is no life, and yet you wouldn’t release him.  How do you know what he felt, did he talk to you?  Make hand signals?  No.  So I did it for you.  You didn’t have the guts, and I do.  Perhaps you were afraid, or sentimental.  The kindest thing was to let him go.  You never did understand mercy.  Never.  You left it to me to end the pain back in Texas.  I put an end to the pain you caused.  But this time it was pain I had caused and you were prolonging it, perverse bastard, and so I took control.  And I did it knowing you would come after me, so here we are, and I am about to die.

-page 247