One of the writing projects I am working on is an historical thriller that takes place in the present and the past in Atlanta and Madison, Georgia. The story of the past centers around the town of Madison and two families shortly after the civil war, continuing through the new century. This era is known as the Reconstruction of the South. The present story is of a young woman who lives in Atlanta and is connected to those two families of the past in more ways than she could have ever imagined.

My research has not only taken me to the Reconstruction era but many years prior to the civil war. The deeper I go the more I am discovering about how this war is so much more complex than many have ever explored.

Though my story is a work of fiction, I will have many themes and content in the story that are factual. Often times those themes will be uncomfortable but one I am hoping will bring to light to the many attitudes of that period that people today do not want to face or talk about. My research is to understand and my writing is to explore the motivations and the human condition during the hardships from all of the people. 

The books below are the current research books I will be diving into this week.

Women of the South in War Times by Matthew Page Andrews

It may truly be said of the Southern women of 1861-1865 that the simple narrative of their life and work unfolds a record of achievement, endurance, and self-sacrificing devotion that should be revealed and recognized as a splendid inspiration to men and women everywhere. The stories contained in this volume depict the life of the Southern people, particularly the women, within the lines of the Confederacy during the four years of its turbulent existence.

When I was a slave (Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection) Edited by Norman R. Yetman

In an effort to provide unemployed writers with work during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States Government, through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), funded the Federal Writers’ Project. One of the group’s most noteworthy and enduring achievements was the Slave Narrative Collection, consisting of more than 2,000 transcripts of interviews with former slaves, who, in blunt, simple words, provided often-startling first-person accounts of their lives in bondage. This book reprints some of the most detailed and engrossing life histories in the collection. Each narrative is complete.
Thirty-four gripping testimonies are included, with all slave occupations represented — from field hand and cook to French tutor and seamstress. Personal treatment reported by these individuals also encompassed a wide range — from the harshest and exploitative to living and working conditions that were intimate and benevolent.
An illuminating and unique source of information about life in the South before, during, and after the Civil War, these memoirs, most importantly, preserve the opinions and perspective of those who were enslaved. Invaluable to students, teachers, and specialists in Southern history, this compelling book will intrigue anyone interested in the African-American experience.

On the threshold of Freedom by Clarence L. Mohr

In this enlightening study, Clarence L. Mohr follows the demise of chattel slavery in one state of the Confederate South. Like the slavery regime itself, Mohr’s story is biracial in character, embracing the perspectives of both blacks and whites as they struggled to comprehend the approach of black freedom within a framework of attitudes and assumptions shaped by decades of mutual exposure to Georgia’s peculiar institution. By exploring in detail the changing patterns of black-white interaction that preceded legal emancipation in 1865, On the Threshold of Freedom defines central tendencies within Georgia slavery and suggests important links between antebellum life and the events of early Reconstruction.