In this ""unpretending story"" published in 1867, Sarah Palmer, known to the Union soldiers she nursed during the Civil War as ""Aunt Becky,"" tells simply and directly one woman's tale of war. Palmer, believed to have been the first woman to serve as a Union Army nurse, cared for countless sick, wounded, and dying soldiers during her three years of service. Said one soldier, ""I never knew a woman so much thought of as she was by the boys - she never showed any partiality - we all got the same attention - officers no more than privates.""
2016. The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals is in trouble. Ariel discovers that her mother Mona's animal sanctuary in Western Kansas has not only been the target of anti-Semitic hate crimes, it is also for sale, due to hidden financial ruin. Ariel, living a new life in progressive Lawrence, and estranged from her mother for six years, returns to her childhood home - and finds her first love, a ranch hand named Gideon, still working at the Bright Side. Back in Lawrence, Ariel's fiancé, Dex, sets out to confront Ariel and finds her questioning the meaning of her life in Lawrence--and whether she belongs with Dex or with someone else, somewhere else.
After more than three years of grim fighting, General Ulysses Grant had a plan to end the Civil War--laying siege to Petersburg, Virginia, thus cutting off supplies to the Confederate capital at Richmond. He established his headquarters at City Point on the James River, requiring thousands of troops, tons of supplies, as well as extensive medical facilities and staff. Nurses flooded the area, yet many did not work in medical capacities--they served as organizers, advocates and intelligence gatherers. Nursing emerged as a noble profession with multiple specialties. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, this history covers the resilient women who opened the way for others into postwar medical, professional and political arenas.
Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was "Mark Twain," when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom's childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain's novel. Now married to Tom's cousin Sid Hopkins, Becky has children of her own to protect while the men of Missouri are off fighting their "un-Civil" War. But when tragedy strikes at home, Becky embarks on a phenomenal quest to find her husband and save her family---a life journey that takes her from the Mississippi River's steamboats to Ozark rebel camps, from Nevada's silver mines to the gilded streets of San Francisco. Time and again, stubborn but levelheaded Becky must reconcile her independent spirit and thirst for adventure with the era's narrow notions of marriage and motherhood. As she seeks to find a compromise between fulfillment and security, she also grapples with ghosts of her past. Can she forgive herself, or be forgiven, for the lies she's told to the men she's loved? Will she ever forget the maddening, sweet-talking, irresponsible Tom Sawyer, the boy who stole her heart as a little girl? And when she is old, and Huck and Tom and Twain only memories, whose shadow will still lie beside her?
A New York Times Notable Book In medieval England, a runaway scholar-priest named Nicholas Barber has joined a traveling theater troupe as they make their way toward their liege lord’s castle. In need of money, they decide to perform at a village en route. When their traditional morality plays fail to garner them an audience, they begin to stage the “the play of Thomas Wells”—their own depiction of the real-life drama unfolding within the village around the murder of a young boy. The villagers believe they have already identified the killer, and the troupe believes their play will be a straightforward depiction of justice served. But soon the players soon learn that the details of the crime are elusive, and the lines between performance and reality become blurred as they discover, scene by scene, line by line, what really happened. Thought-provoking and unforgettable, Morality Play is at once a masterful work of historical fiction, a gripping murder mystery, and a literary work of the first order.
Timid and small for her age, nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann discovers her own abilities and gains a new perception of the world around her when she goes to live with relatives on a farm in Vermont.
Elvis Presley's private secretary provides revelations about goings-on at Graceland, the headquarters of the Presley empire, and about the legendary superstar's generosity and relationships with his father, women, and friends.
