Adelicia

Adelicia is a historical novel, not a biography, though it is built on the life of its title character and the events of her era. In 1838 Nashville is shifting from a frontier settlement into a busy city, and Adelicia, twenty-one, headstrong and ambitious, arrives there as the story begins. When her first husband dies, she becomes one of the richest women in the country, but her fortune cannot shield her from grief. She outlives her first two husbands and six of her ten children.

The novel is divided into five parts. Part I (1838 to 1846) covers her twenties: her marriage to Isaac Franklin, his death, the loss of three of her four children, and a dispute over Franklin's will that moves from the Tennessee Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Part II (1847 to 1863) follows her in her thirties and forties as she runs her business affairs. It covers her marriage to Joseph Acklen, the inheritance she receives from Franklin, the deaths of three more children, the start of the Civil War, and Acklen's death.

Part III (1863 to 1864) shows Adelicia as a shrewd operator who travels through battlefields by mule and wagon, cultivates influential people on both sides of the conflict, and sends her cotton from New Orleans, then a wartime port, to England, accepting payment in gold. Part IV (1864) brings her back to a war-torn Nashville, where she learns that Union General Thomas Wood is occupying her estate, Belle Monte. Part V (1864 to 1867) follows her undeterred to Europe, where she is entertained in Paris by the Countess Eugenie and Napoleon III. She then returns to Nashville, rebuilds her position, and becomes the leading figure of a city that both resents her and is drawn to her.

The book's appeal rests on its heroine's adventures and on the many subplots that keep both the dialogue and the narrative moving. Much of the Civil War material is drawn from depositions and logs kept by Union and Confederate forces.