An engrossing account of life in the American South during its most momentous era.
Pulliam assembles an epistolary history of a Southern family’s experience before, during, and after the Civil War.
The editor furnishes a remarkably illuminating account of the David family’s experience in Georgia, one that ranges across a historically tumultuous time for the United States, from the 1840s to the 1880s. The story is almost entirely told through correspondence, mostly sent to James Horatio David and Thirza Bowen David, the husband and wife at the head of the family, from their seven children. The David family owned a sizable farm in Georgia—it spanned approximately 1,000 acres in Jackson County—and in most respects lived a life that was typical of a Southern family in the middle of the 19th century, one devoted to work, religion, and the support of each other. Simeon, one of the sons and the most prolific writer among his siblings, writes from his own home in Cherokee County about the school he owns, boasts proudly that he possesses, with his sister Mary, the “finest body of land in the neighborhood,” and cheerfully reports on the “pleasant life that we all live.” However, beginning in 1859, Simeon’s letters begin to note the “political troubles in the land,” alluding to the tensions between the North and South over the issues of slavery and the possibility of a Southern succession. When war broke out in 1861, all of the brothers were drawn into it, a perilous commitment movingly acknowledged by Horatio, Simeon’s brother: “Mother, if the South whips the North I expect to see you on this earth, but if the reverse, I can’t meet you this side of the grave. I will try to be prepared to meet you there.” The reader is granted an uncommonly intimate look into the lives of a Southern family—a slave-owning one—as they experience one of the most terrible crises in the nation’s history. The letters convey a sense of the family’s evolving judgments and fears; after succession becomes an issue, Simeon reassures his parents that all will be well: “You need have no apprehensions of war. I have never believed there would be any war of consequence. It will be a bloodless revolution for the hand of Providence is in it all.” Later, Simeon would die in the very same war whose emergence he doubted.
This collection spans more than 500 pages and could probably stand to be condensed to a more digestible length—it includes needless letters from “far-flung relatives,” and there is too much discussion of the uneventful and prosaic (in one letter, Simeon confesses, “I have nothing very interesting to communicate to you”). As a result, the reader can become lost in an ocean of information that sometimes seems indiscriminately included, as if the aim is encyclopedic comprehensiveness. However, as a whole, the book paints a fascinating portrait of life at the time, more immediate and unfiltered than most historical accounts. Pulliam contributes a helpful running commentary providing all of the historical background and explanation necessary to fully comprehend the correspondence. This is a marvelously edifying work of historical scholarship.
An engrossing account of life in the American South during its most momentous era.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 582
Publisher: Mercer Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A host of well-drawn characters and a mass of historical detail make this 12th-century adventure entertaining despite its...
In all of Southwark, there's no more skilled saddlemaker than Master Mainard, married to shrewish Bertrild but deeply in love with Sabina, the blind whore who lives in the Old Priory Guesthouse, a brothel run by beautiful Magdalene la Bâtarde (A Mortal Bane, 1999). Mainard has installed Sabina in his home, but it seems to all the better part of discretion for Sabina to return to the Guesthouse after Bertrild is found stabbed to death in the back yard. Ensconced in the Old Priory, Sir Bellamy of Itchen (commonly called Bell), an emissary of the Bishop of Winchester and Magdalene's besotted admirer, is attempting to find Bertrild's killer. At length Bell reduces the list of likely suspects to the five men who ply their trade in the area of Mainard's workshop, from which the murder weapon had been stolen. But Bell's investigation is further complicated by the news that Bertrild had been doing a thriving business in blackmail; by a second killing; and by the arrival of Bertrild's uncle Sir Druerie, with his own decided ideas about the murderer's identity.
A host of well-drawn characters and a mass of historical detail make this 12th-century adventure entertaining despite its hopelessly confusing mishmash of a plot.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-86998-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Distinguished by a keen sense of period detail and sharp pacing: Geary serves his subject with dignity and grace.
The author/illustrator of Jack the Ripper (1995) continues to focus on Victorian crime in this latest historical comic, part of a series on 19th-century murder, based on a true-life story so compelling it inspired a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe was intrigued by the philosophy of detection in the case, Geary’s apparent interest lies in its revelations about urban lowlife of mid–19th-century New York City. His thick-lined black-and-white narrative, with its loose, curvy edges and distinctive bulbous lettering, well suits this historical curiosity. Geary’s well-researched book recounts the mysterious death of Mary Rogers, a young single woman who lived with her mother near present-day City Hall. When her corpse washed up on the western side of the Hudson River, many journalists became fascinated by the possible reasons for her fate. Was she an innocent, brutally murdered by one of the boarders at her mother’s house? Was she killed by a jealous lover or by one of the many male admirers who patronized the tobacco store where she worked? Or was it a botched abortion? These questions captured the imagination of the contemporary public and press because, in Geary’s view, Mary’s story was a powerful cautionary tale of emerging city life, which the artist illuminates in many sidebar historical drawings. Unsolved in part because of the period’s inadequate forensic techniques, the story becomes “a testament to the unknown and unknowable,” and Geary’s visual airiness perfectly captures the mysteriousness at its core. This is certainly a far cry from his early work for National Lampoon and Heavy Metal.
Distinguished by a keen sense of period detail and sharp pacing: Geary serves his subject with dignity and grace.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56163-274-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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