Civil War Women

THE HEIRS OF CAHIRA O’CONNOR SERIES - BOOK THREE It is said that as Cahira, daughter of the great Irish king Rory O’Connor, lay dying of a wound from a Norman blade, she lifted her hand toward heaven and beseeched God that others would follow…breaking forth from the courses to which they are bound to restore right in this murderous world… To Kathleen O’Connor, Cahira’s story was nothing more than a legend–until research divulged that the tale was true. Stunned, Kathleen realizes she herself bears Cahira’s mark. Is she destined to continue the legacy? To find the truth, ...

Isabella’s Clan of 1865- Winner of the 2025 John Esten Historical Fiction Award The rooms in Isabella's home in Georgia had once echoed with laughter and joy. The fields had been bountiful, and love seemed to promise a bright future. That was before Lee surrendered to Grant, and typhoid claimed the lives of her parents. At just eighteen years old, Isabella found that her past experiences offered no solace; everything had changed with the Union's victory. Slavery had been abolished, leaving both plantation owners and former slaves facing an uncertain future. It was a new world, and ...

In a nation torn apart by war, Hattie Logan is a woman on the run, desperate to escape the shackles of her privileged past. Seeking refuge from a life of monotony and wealth, Hattie makes a daring choice: to join the ranks of the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. Stationed in the heart of the Civil War's fiery epicenter, Washington City, she immerses herself in the dangerous world of intercepting Confederate mail and unraveling intricate ciphers. But deep within, a burning desire lingers—to make an even greater impact. When an enticing assignment slips through her fingers, Hattie ...

Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.

The only woman ever awarded the Medal of Honor. A battlefield surgeon. A women’s rights advocate. A rebel who redefined what it meant to be a patriot. This is the extraordinary true story of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. In the midst of the American Civil War, Dr. Mary E. Walker shattered barriers as the first female surgeon contracted by the U.S. Army. She operated on wounded soldiers near the front lines, crossed enemy territory to aid civilians, and endured months as a Confederate prisoner of war. For her bravery, she was awarded the Medal of Honor—making her the only woman in American ...

A story of forbidden love, overcoming hardship, and helping others. Can good triumph over evil? A baby’s birth to George Elwood’s wife on their South Carolina plantation threatens to cause a scandal, but the funeral of mother and child seems to ensure that the truth will never be known. Years later, Elwood's son, Thomas, is rescued from disaster by a slave, Mosa. Helping her in return, he discovers the secrets of his family which set him on a collision course with his father and the law. Making it North, Mosa receives unexpected news and must decide whether to risk her life and return ...

The Colley family is made of modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. Although Southerners, the Colleys try to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock, burn their farm, and arrest their daughter, Adair, on charges of “enemy collaboration”. Yet as this innocent young woman soon discovers, fate can have a double edge. While imprisoned, she falls in love with her interrogator, a Union major who helps her escape.

Many people in history have claimed that Abraham Lincoln never loved Mary Todd Lincoln, and that in fact his love was focused upon Anne Rutledge. They have claimed that his wife hurt him politically though she drove him to the Presidency, that she embarrassed him financially as well as socially and inflicted on him the agony of adjustment to her psychopathic personality. Yet, is there any truth to any of these claims?

This is the original diary of the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut, Jr., who was an aide to President Jefferson Davis. It is a fascinating narrative of all the years of the American Civil War. It focuses on the daily lives and hardships of all who suffered through the war, from ordinary people to the Confederacy's generals and political elite. Mary Chesnut's prose has lost none of its provocative bite through the ages.

Dances with Wolves meets the story of Job in this gripping historical epic of tragedy, loss, and redemption. Georgia, 1861. As the tides of war sweep south, Aidan MacAlister is drawn north like water up a reed by the inexorable pull to defend his land. After tragedy strikes at Gettysburg, Aidan spirals into unfamiliar, dark places of unbridled fury, earning him the nickname, the Fourth Horseman. A hero to his fellow soldiers, Aidan’s self-loathing consumes him, and every lesson his family taught him crumbles to dust beneath its weight. Aidan returns to the farm to find it ravaged by ...

No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school.

On March 22, 2023, the Swedish Academy organized a conference on threats to democracy and freedom of expression featuring a slate of distinguished speakers including Arundhati Roy, Timothy Snyder, and Sofi Oksanen. Oksanen’s address—entitled “Putin's War on Women”— would go on to spark such interest that the acclaimed Finnish writer felt compelled to return to it as the basis for a larger, more in-depth look at Putin’s threat to women. The result is Same River, Twice, a devastating book-length essay that incisively builds on the themes and arguments first presented in her powerful speech.

In the relentless turmoil of the Civil War, Union spy Hattie Logan engineers a daring escape from the infamous Libby Prison. Fueled by an unyielding determination for retribution, she embarks on a quest to hunt down Luke Blackstone, the double agent who betrayed her and her first true love. Her relentless pursuit of justice leads her to the heart of Tennessee, where she forms an unlikely alliance with the spirited and unpredictable Pauline Carlton, once an actress, now a fellow spy. Together, Hattie and Pauline enlist the aid of a resourceful Nashville prostitute, unraveling a perilous web ...

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.

The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

Susie King Taylor, born a slave in 1848, would learn to read at secret schools and go on to teach countless others to read and write. Follow the course of the Civil War in her own words as she remembers her work as a nurse and teacher with an Army troop of African-American soldiers.

In 2005, historian Jason Emerson discovered a steamer trunk formerly owned by Robert Todd Lincoln's lawyer and stowed in an attic for 40 years. The trunk contained a rare find: 25 letters pertaining to Mary Todd Lincoln's life and insanity case, letters assumed long destroyed by the Lincoln family. Mary wrote 20 of the letters herself, more than half from the insane asylum to which her son Robert had her committed, and many in the months and years after. The Madness of Mary Lincoln is the first examination of Mary Lincoln's mental illness based on the lost letters in 20 years.

In the treacherous and uncertain era of war, a haunting secret propels Union spy Hattie Logan deeper into her clandestine work. As her feelings for Lieutenant John Elliott become increasingly entangled, she embarks on a resolute journey to prove her worth on her own terms. Teamed up with former Confederate spy Mollie Pitman, Hattie challenges the authority of the men in charge, persistently cautioning against placing trust in Mollie. But as Hattie dares to peel back the layers of a perilous conspiracy aimed at hijacking a ferry and raiding a Lake Erie island prison, her own loyalties are ...

Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, the author of the popular and award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the most memorable and impactful individuals he has come across during his three decades of researching and writing about the American Civil War—or as he calls them, his “Unforgettables” in the aptly titled, Unforgettables: Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the Civil War Era.