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Tag: Civil War

Cane River, by Lalita Tademy

Cane River, by Lalita Tademy

The novel Cane River is so closely based on Lalita Tademy’s ancestors that she includes family photographs, documents, and newspaper clippings. In 1995, Tademy quit her job as a vice president of Sun Microsystems so she could research her family’s history and write a novel. Cane River was published in 2001. Tademy starts her novel with the story of a woman seven generations removed from herself: Elisabeth, a slave in the early 1800’s on a plantation along Cane River in…

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The Tall Woman, by Wilma Dykeman

The Tall Woman, by Wilma Dykeman

The Tall Woman, first published in 1962, is a classic of Appalachian literature. At the time of her birth, author Wilma Dykeman’s family had resided in the mountains of North Carolina for generations, and the novel takes place in these mountains during and after the Civil War. The novel follows the main character, Lydia, from young womanhood to death. Shortly after their marriage her husband, Mark, decides to join the war effort on the Union side, while her father and…

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Jubilee, by Margaret Walker

Jubilee, by Margaret Walker

If you are looking for a non-racist alternative to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, here it is: Jubilee. Written by an African-American woman and first published in 1966, Jubilee is a fictionalized account of the author’s great-grandmother’s experiences before, during, and after the Civil War. The photo above shows Walker’s great-grandmother, the “Vyry” of the novel. She took after her white slave-owner father in the color of her skin. I found this photo on the U Space Gallery web site….

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