Sarah Morgan - by Charles East (Paperback)

About the Book

Now available for the first time in its complete form, this diary of a real-life Scarlett O'Hara gives us a rare, fascinating look at life in the war-torn Confederacy. "Should rank alongside Mary Chestnut's famous wartime journal as one of the most important personal records of the Civil War. Highly recommended".--Library Journal. Photos, family tree, map, index.

Book Synopsis

Born into one of the best families of Baton Rouge, Sarah Morgan was not yet twenty when she began her diary in January 1862, nine months after the start of the Civil War. She was soon to experience a coming-of-age filled with the turmoil and upheaval that devastated the wartime South. She set down the Remarkable events of the war in a record that remains one of the most vivid, evocative portrayals in existence of a time and place that today make up a crucial chapter in our national history. Sarah Morgan herself emerges as one of the most memorable nineteenth-century women in fiction or nonfiction, a young woman of intelligence and fortitude, as well as of high spirits and passion, who questioned the society into which she was born and the meaning of the war for ordinary families like her own and for the divided nation as a whole. Now published in its entirety for the first time, Sarah Morgan's classic account brings the Civil War and the Old South to life with all the freshness and immediacy of great literature.

Review Quotes

Ken Burns Remarkable...Morgan reminds us that the best history is heartfelt and heart-shared. Sarah Morgan will rightfully take its place next to Mary Chesnut's Diary as a thoroughly authentic voice of the war.

About the Author

Charles East is a former editor at the University of Georgia Press and former director of the Louisiana State University Press. He is the author of several books and is the series editor for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.