This book came out when I was in graduate school and I didn't read it at the time (too busy!) but I recall it getting a lot of acclaim. I am usually a little nervous dipping into fiction about antebellum America, but in this case I shouldn't have worried at all. The book struck me as very evocative of the period, and I enjoyed Jones's tendency to carry the stories of minor characters far beyond what purpose they served within the book, going on for a paragraph or so about their children, grandchildren, and even how they might end up in a historian's book. A good reminder that all of these characters (not just the main ones) lived full lives. In fiction, authors get to fill in a lot of gaps where historians would (justifiably) fear to tread due to gaps in the sources. But Jones's imagination doesn't seem to me to work against the grain of what we know about the time period. Rather, his language and characterizations mesh well with our knowledge, and the imaginative reconstructions were both plausible and a great read.