Shadows on My Heart The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia [Paperback]

ELIZABETH R. BAER is Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Gustavus Adolphus College.

When the Civil War began in 1861 Lucy Rebecca Buck was the eighteen-year-old daughter of a prosperous planter, living on her family's plantation in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. On Christmas Day of that year she began a diary which she would keep for the duration of the war, during which time troops were quartered in her home and battles were literally waged in her front yard.

This extraordinary chronicle mirrors the experience of many women torn between loyalty to the Confederate cause and dissatisfaction with the unrealistic ideology of white southern womanhood. In powerful, unsentimental language, Buck's diary reveals her anger and ambivalence about the challenges thrust upon her by the upheaval of her self, her family, and the world as she knew it. This document provides an extraordinary glimpse into the "shadows on the heart" of both Lucy Buck and the American South.

In Baer's fine new edition, Lucy Buck's voice is fascinating. Through her absorbing account, we witness the disintegration of the confederacy.

Yields a rare insight into the heart of one Southern woman whose primary pre-war purpose was to serve her societal role.

This chronicle mirrors the experience of many women torn between loyalty to the Confederate cause and dissatisfaction with the unrealistic ideology of white southern womanhood. In powerful, unsentimental language, Buck's diary reveals her anger and ambivalence about the challenges thrust upon her, her family, and the world as she knew it.