“She wants to tell the truth. He is the star. He is the one who went to war and was part of History with a capital H. He is the one who became the local character, the tourist attraction. She is just the person who cares for him, puts up with him.
“Yet she learned everything in the world from him. She had the advantage of marrying someone so much older. They had great as well as bad times together, plus nine children. Lucy is the one who, after all the warring of marriage and a very long life thereafter, finally comes into the strong need of peace.
“Our play, ‘Oldest Living Confederate Widow: Her Confession,’ enacts Lucy’s struggle for peace with her long dead soldier-husband, their own private Appomattox, on the last night of her life.”
Gurganus said he likes what he sees on stage now, one of his oldest friends playing perhaps his best character.
“Jane as a 90-year-old is really convincing,” he said. “She really knows Lucy as well as I do. Willie (Marsden) was shell shocked, battle fatigued – waiting to 50 to marry. He has horrific transference and can’t be too near people. He visits his memories of battle onto Lucy and the children, as much as he thinks he is avoiding those memories.”
Gurganus was drafted during the Vietnam War and used his own sense of displacement to understand Willie.
“Lucy doesn’t really blame him for what was done to her,” Gurganus says. “She feels in some strong way that it never was his fault.”
Tickets for the Saturday, Sept. 29 performance of Jane Holding’s Oldest Living Confederate Widow: Her Confession are available from the Tryon Fine Arts Center, (828) 859-8322 or www.tryonarts.org. Premium tickets include an after-event reception with Jane Holding and author Allan Gurganus, with Southern Fare provided by Tupelo Honey Café.
An art show, “Recovery, Crafted at CooperRiis” will also be on display and will run through Oct. 20.