Civil War buff Robert Hicks based his 2005 novel on the true story of a Confederate woman who devoted herself to giving Southern soldiers a proper burial 鈥 in her own backyard. The novel begins in 1894 when, the protagonist, Carrie McGavock, is an elderly woman. An equally elderly soldier 鈥 who turns out to be her lost love 鈥 shows up at her door and asks if he too can be buried in her personal graveyard.