ROSE COTTAGE CHRONICLES

In transcribing, even deciphering, this selection of Civil War family letters, these editors have aptly earned their titles. They have transformed what must be an unwieldy collection of over a thousand letters and several journals into the Bryant-Stephens' family epic. Chris Walker revives these voices by stepping aside and letting their natural expressiveness and surprising understatement be heard without sounding stiff or disengaged. With this approach, Walker faithfully preserves the lively courtship and marriage of Winston Stephens and "Tivie" Bryant. Throughout, we hear the antebellum assumptions of slave-owning planters, the boisterous heroism of the Stephens brothers, and the hopes and frustrations of a young wife enduring the lonely rigors of plantation management, child-rearing, and waiting while her husband and brothers face the uncertain outcome of the America's costliest fighting. V.L.B. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/MAR 01]