SOURCE: Simon, Linda. Review of Civil Wars, by Rosellen Brown. Prairie Schooner 59, no. 2 (summer 1985): 113-15.

In the following review, Simon compliments Brown's adeptness with description and characterization in Civil Wars, but argues that the subplots occasionally clash with the main story line.

When we meet him in the late 1970s [in Civil Wars], Teddy Carll is a has-been: he was once a charismatic civil rights activist, a leader, a daring strategist, a man engaged in an urgent struggle. Now he is a travelling salesman for an educational book company, husband to his former comrade Jessie (they spent their honeymoon in jail), father of two; and he is itching for a fight. Teddy left his heart and soul in the sixties. He longs to be at the barricades, but there are none—not on his route to small colleges throughout Mississippi, not in the crumbling neighborhood where the Carlls...