LEFT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD: Characters in Search of a Novel What do they have in common? Some of these people have appeared in A Scratch with the Rebels and Beyond All Price. Others made cameo appearances in The Road to Frogmore. All of them are here because, even though their stories were fascinating in their own right, they did not fit into the novels where they first appeared. These are characters and events that were literally "left by the side of the road" as other historical novels took shape. These vignettes allow them to speak for themselves. Together they provide a multi-faceted glimpse into the stories behind the Civil War. Slaves abandoned by their owners when the Union Army invaded coastal South Carolina . . . Government officials charged with reorganizing captured territory . . . Army officers and the women who accompanied them . . . Free blacks determined to rescue their brothers and sisters from slavery . . . An opera singer with a penchant for pornography . . . Abolitionists with competing visions for the future of newly-freed slaves . . . A talented and sympathetic nurse who was once a runaway, a fugitive from justice, and a battered wife . . . Carolyn Schriber's novels have been praised as "the stuff of a great book ... storytelling yes, but also a subtle message that eats at you...and makes you go seek out more information ... and gives you something to talk about over dinner." (Joyce Faulkner, Past President of the Military Writers Society of America.)

These are the people you don't read about in history books. A Harvard-educated New Englander. He was welcomed as a teacher by a school for apprentices in Charleston, South Carolina. But when his history lessons about the founding of America clashed with the pro-secession rhetoric of local slave-owners, he was out of a job. Can he find a way to reconcile his abolitionist sentiments with the practical need to support his family in a region whose economy is based on slavery? A wealthy Southern belle. She has always believed that her ancestors were benevolent slave-owners and that they treated their slaves with dignity and respect. Now she has inherited the family plantations, only to see the institution of slavery come under attack as an unmitigated evil. The coming of the Civil War threatens her land, her children, her marriage, and the values that have always sustained her. How much will she be willing to sacrifice in order to help her family survive? A female slave. She was given to her mistress when they were both very small because they shared a common grandfather - a fact that everyone knew and no one talked about. The war offers her a promise of freedom as well as the prospect of a bittersweet separation from her beloved cousin. Will the bonds of family stretch or break? A Confederate soldier. He supported secession and eagerly volunteered for the Army, believing, like most young men, that he was invincible. And like too many of those young men, he was wounded and taken prisoner. The aftermath of his war experience left him with wounds far deeper than those that caused the amputation of his leg. Can he conquer the pain, the flashbacks, the disability, and the nightmares that keep him incapacitated and unable to return to his former life? The newly-weds. The couple married in haste, realizing that the coming of war might mean a long period of separation. But the young wife did not expect to receive a black-bordered letter telling her that her husband had been killed in battle. Now she faces life in wartime as a widow and the mother of newborn twins. She can return to her family or seek to make a a new life for herself. Which way will she turn? The children. Uprooted from their home and school by a series of family disasters, they face an uncertain future. The teenage boy gives up his dream of becoming a dairy farmer. With tears streaming down his face, he begs his cows to run away because Confederate soldiers are confiscating all cattle as food for the army. His brothers and sisters struggle to adapt to new conditions of poverty, hunger, and hard work. And they watch with fear as those circumstances threaten the stability of their parents' marriage. Will the family stay together or scatter as their friends and neighbors have done? An educated ex-slave. Despite his free status, he realizes that freedom is just a word -- meaningless without respect in the eyes of the community and without the ability to interact on an equal basis with those who once were his owners. Will his freedom really liberate him or will it destroy him? America's Civil War was more than a political disaster. It was a human tragedy, and everyone - North and South, young and old, black and white, rich and poor - everyone was caught up in that broken world. Yet somehow the victims held on to the hope that love for one another could mend the tears in the fabric of their lives. These are their stories.

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What could possibly go wrong? Laura Town and her life-long friend Ellen Murray joined the Port Royal Experiment in 1862 to test their abolitionist ideals against the realities of slaves abandoned by their owners in the Low Country of South Carolina. They hoped to find a place they could call home, as well as an outlet for their talents as schoolteacher and doctor. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until . . . Until they experienced the climate-violent storms spawned over the Atlantic, searing heat, air tainted by swamp gasses, cockroaches, bedbugs, swarming mosquitoes, and "no-see-ums" that left nasty bites in their wake. Until they met the slaves themselves-full of fear and resentment of white people caused by centuries of cruelty, slaves who had never seen the outside world, slaves whose superstitions included breath-sucking night hags, evil graybeards living in local trees, and unfree spirits rolling down the roads at night in balls of fire. Until the dedication of the missionaries found itself tested by lack of food, furniture, medicine, and the bare necessities of life. Until the unity of the abolitionist effort fell apart under the strains of religious differences and unrecognized prejudices. And until the combination of battle wounds and a raging smallpox epidemic made death their constant companion. Could these two independent women survive the Civil War and achieve their goal of turning slaves into citizens?