Robert Hicks

In January 2016 Hicks was a panelist and featured speaker at the third annual Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in Rancho Mirage, CA. Along with American historian H.W. Brands, Hicks took part in the panel discussion "The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Matters."

The novel is set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War. It is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army—and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever. At Gettysburg, he lost the use of his left arm. At the Battle of Chickamauga, his right leg was amputated. Starting fresh after the war, he married Anna Marie Hennen and fathered 11 children with her, including three sets of twins. But fate had other plans. Crippled by his war wounds and defeat, ravaged by financial misfortune, Hood had one last foe to battle: yellow fever.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, in 2014 Hicks released the first small batch of his bourbon whiskey Battlefield Bourbon. Each of the 1,864 bottles is numbered and signed by Hicks. About his decision to release Battlefield Bourbon he said, "My decision to only produce 1,864 bottles of Battlefield Bourbon this year makes it pretty much the smallest batch of small batch bourbon anywhere. Yet, it only seemed right as I promised myself that whatever I produced would be really good and really rare. Besides, as I am signing and numbering every bottle, I figured that I needed to protect the old signing hand and 1,864 bottles seemed like enough. Of course, 1864 is the year of the Battle of Franklin, which this sesquicentennial commemoration is all about."

A lifelong collector, Hicks was the first Tennessean to be listed among Art & Antiques' s Top 100 Collectors in America –- his collection focuses on outsider art by artists such as Howard Finster and B.F.Perkins, Tennesseana, and Southern Material Culture. He served as curator on the exhibition, Art of Tennessee, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The exhibition was a seven-year endeavor from conception at his kitchen table to its opening, September 2003. He was co-editor of the exhibition's award-winning and critically acclaimed catalog, Art of Tennessee.

He is founding chairman emeritus of "Franklin's Charge: A Vision and Campaign for the Preservation of Historic Open Space" in the fight to secure and preserve both battlefield and other historic open space in Williamson County. Franklin's Charge took on the massive mission of saving what remains of the eastern flank of the battlefield at Franklin -– the largest remaining undeveloped fragment of the battlefield -– and turning it into a public battlefield park. The American Battlefield Protection Program has called this endeavor "the largest battlefield reclamation in North American history." By the end of 2005, Franklin's Charge had already raised over 5 million dollars toward this goal, surpassing anything ever done within any other community in America to preserve battlefield open space. As Jim Lighthizer, President of the Civil War Preservation Trust has said, "There is no 'close second' in any community in America, to what Robert Hicks and Franklin's Charge has done in Franklin." The Governor named Hicks as a commissioner to plan out the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War in Tennessee.

Hicks' second novel, A Separate Country was released on September 23, 2009.

The result was Hicks' first novel, The Widow of the South. In writing the novel, he hoped to bring national attention back to this moment in American history, the impact those five bloody hours played in making us a nation, and in the preservation of the sites tied to the story. The Widow of the South was launched September 1, 2005 to overwhelming critical success, entering the New York Times Bestseller List after only one week out.

In December 2005, Nashville's The Tennessean named him "Tennessean of the Year" for the impact The Widow of the South had on Tennessee, heritage tourism and preservation.

Hicks's first book, a collaboration with French-American photographer Michel Arnaud, came out in 2000: Nashville: the Pilgrims of Guitar Town.

In December 1997, after a third term as President of the Carnton board, and in light of his years of service to the site, Hicks was named by board resolution: "the driving force in the restoration and preservation of Historic Carnton Plantation."

Robert Hicks was born and raised in South Florida. He moved to Williamson County, Tennessee in 1974 and lives near the Bingham Community at "Labor in Vain," his late-eighteenth-century log cabin.

Robert Hicks (born January 30, 1951) is the author of The New York Times Bestseller The Widow of the South and has played a major role in preserving the historic Carnton mansion, a focal point in the Battle of Franklin which occurred on November 30, 1864. Nashville Lifestyles Magazine recently named Robert as the #2 in the top 100 Reasons to Love Nashville, describing him as Nashville's "Master of Ceremonies".