Carl Goggins

Of Love and War: a Novel Carl Goggins

There are two main ideas in OF LOVE AND WAR-a character driven, literary historical-and both are closely tied together. In the love story part of the book, the protagonist, confederate officer Temple St. George Freeman (who was found on the back porch of the central Alabama family that adopted him) learns that the love of his life, Lila Southall (the daughter of a slave-owning, Virginia Senator) has Negro blood in her veins-a crushing blow, since she had been reared to believe she was white. Yet, upon discovering that where there's love-when no one exists for you but the other-that's all there is-he marries her anyway. Embedded in the war side of the novel is the notion that greed-the parent of pride and vanity-is the starter of all wars. That no one has yet found a way to keep a war from starting; that wars are only fought, never won; and that the only purpose of a war is to end it. And it is with this realization that the protagonist, at the end of the novel, decides to return to the war, do everything in his power to end the conflict raging between the North and South.