What aspects of Sidney Lanier's life are being discussed in Andrew Hudgins' "Appetite For Poison?"

Sidney Lanier was a man born in Macon, Georgia, who fought
with the Confederacy during the Civil War and was captured and held prisoner in a Union
prison for several months. He found his way to Alabama and lived and worked there for
several years. He was a writer, musician and lawyer as well. He left to return to
Georgia, and later moved his family to Baltimore. His health was adversely affected when
he contracted tuberculosis while in prison during the war. This plagued him for the rest
of his life. He was married to Mary Day of Macon, and they had several children
together. Sources are unclear as to Lanier exact age when he
died.

Realistic aspects of Lanier's life as presented in
Andrew Hudgins' "Appetite For Poison" include reference to the musical portion of his
life. He was the first flute in the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland. In this
piece of writing, the reference to this is:

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At work, I asked the second flute what his wife
would do if she found out...He grinned, nudged, winked, and slashed his index finger
across his throat...

Hudgins
mentioned Lanier children. There is nothing available as to his children's names, but in
the narrative, his wife, also called Mary, gives birth to the Lanier's first child;
later in the piece, Mary is pregnant with their second
child:

We'd
been out almost an hour when a sharecropper left his mule and walked beside use for a
quarter of a mile before he spoke. He asked me if "the lady" felt like planting his
first handful of seed corn. It is good luck, apparently, to have a pregnant woman start
your crop...But Mary was meticulous. She spaced the kernels carefully and pinched the
red clay over them.

It is
documented that Lanier was survived by his wife and their
children.

Lanier also had tuberculosis which he contracted
while in the Union prison where he was kept for some months—after being caught running a
blockade. He had the illness for the rest of his life, and died between thirty-eight and
forty (depending upon the source).

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...The last time we made love, I had a spasm in
my lungs and spit blood on the pillow case. Not
much.

All of these pieces
from Hudgin's "Appetite For Poison" are documented in Lanier's life in the
1800s.