Consolidating on the success of his bestselling debut may have seemed a daunting proposition for Robert Hicks, but his second outing suggests little cause for concern. "A Separate Country" in many ways exceeds the standard set by his earlier novel, and should further cultivate a loyal readership. Artistically more ambitious than "The Widow Of The South", certain technical elements may at times burden this novel, but Hicks more than compensates with a voice of genuine poetic insight and an evocation of time and place so palpably authentic as to render it ultimately intact, almost despite itself.

The central thread concerns the redemptive decline of shamed Confederate General John Bell Hood, in the diseased New Orleans of the decade following the Civil War. Two other protagonists, Eli Griffin, arriving with a deadly grudge against the General, and Hood's young wife Anna Marie, join him as the sole voices through which Hicks delivers a convoluted tapestry of multiple perspective and peripatetic timeframe, tracking Hood's downward course through the period of shift from failed reconstruction to the violent reassertion of white entitlement (whose legacy, it appears, still reverberates across our currently polluted political discourse).

At its best, the effect of this approach is successfully to complement the corrupt, byzantine obscurity of the city, much enhanced by an exotic and exquisitely rendered supporting cast: Hood's nemesis and malignant avatar Sebastien Lemerle; diminutive rough diamond Rintrah King; the lost Paschal Girard, focal point of ethnic ambiguity and capricious violence. These tangible, fluid creations conjure a visceral world of rich and sinister vitality, forming one of the novel's principal strengths.

Ultimately, the use of multiple perspectives proves a mixed blessing. Depending on Hicks's comfort with a character, their voice is either natural and plausible, or indistinct and shored by somewhat jarring technical reinforcement. It is Anna Marie through whom Hicks speaks with the most fluent empathy. Readers of his first novel will find in her echoes of Carrie McGavock, and she emerges as the novel's true poetic locus. The least coherent is Hood himself, whose personality, despite doing honest work as the primary structural component, never comes completely into focus. Although a credible guiding principle, Hood's arc seems vested with more disparate qualities than a properly integrated character can convey, and one senses Hicks working a little too hard to mitigate this.

Hicks also struggles to shepherd the complex narrative structure towards a satisfactory conclusion, but the loss of tension is not critical, and none of these concerns threaten to outweigh the manifold pleasures of his new creation. He has been diligent in broadening his palette, and it is paying off, for while not without growing pains, "A Separate Country" proves his considerable development. Now with the makings of a franchise, and a bottomless thematic well from which to draw, we can anticipate the increasingly successful marriage of Hicks's expressive powers with the historical canon in which he is clearly so deeply and affectionately immersed.

Andrew Bett is a piano player and songwriter in College Grove. Originally from the U.K., he has also lived in Australia and Southern California, as a musician and in the business world.