The Blood Tinted Waters Of The Shenandoah

Decades after the Civil War’s end, Confederate veteran John Alexander Stikeleather reflected on his experiences as a soldier in the 4th North Carolina Infantry. He had served in many engagements during his four years of service, but there was one in particular that Stikeleather believed should “never be forgotten”: Cool Spring. While largely overlooked or treated as a footnote to Gen. Jubal A. Early’s raid on Washington in the summer of 1864, the fight at Cool Spring, which one soldier characterized as “a sharp and obstinate affair,” proved critical to Washington’s immediate safety. The virtually unknown combat became a transformative moment for those who fought along the banks of the Shenandoah River in what ultimately became the war’s largest and bloodiest engagement in Clarke County, Virginia. The Blood-Tinted Waters of the Shenandoah examines Gen. Horatio Wright’s pursuit of Jubal Early into the Shenandoah and the clash on July 17–18, 1864. It analyzes the decisions of leaders on both sides, explores the environment’s impact on the battle, and investigates how the combat impacted the soldiers and their families—in its immediate aftermath and for decades thereafter. Years of archival research—including an investigation into the backgrounds of the Union and Confederate soldiers who perished in the fighting—coupled with intimate knowledge of the battlefield helps preserve the memory of the fight that should “never be forgotten.” Author Jonathan Noyalas’s study offers not only a history of an overlooked engagement in the oft-contested Shenandoah Valley, but—as Pulitzer Prize finalist Brian Matthew Jordan notes in the book’s Foreword—“a keen reminder that Civil War battles are rich laboratories in which to observe the human experience in all its complexity.”

"This book examines Gen. Horatio Wright's pursuit of Gen. Jubal Early into the Shenandoah and the clash on July 17-18, 1864. It analyzes the decisions of leaders on both sides, explores the environment's impact on the battle, and investigates how the combat impacted the soldiers and their families-in its immediate aftermath and for decades thereafter"--

THE STORY: The Ortiz Funeral Room is in big trouble: The body of beloved community activist and nun Sister Rose has been stolen from the viewing room, and waiting for her proper return are some of New York City's most emotionally charged, life-chal

The African American experience in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction This book examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now. Correcting previous assumptions that slavery was not important to the Valley, and that enslaved people were treated better there than in other parts of the South, Jonathan Noyalas demonstrates the strong hold of slavery in the region. He explains that during the war, enslaved and free African Americans navigated a borderland that changed hands frequently—where it was possible to be in Union territory one day, Confederate territory the next, and no-man’s land another. He shows that the region’s enslaved population resisted slavery and supported the Union war effort by serving as scouts, spies, and laborers, or by fleeing to enlist in regiments of the United States Colored Troops. Noyalas draws on untapped primary resources, including thousands of records from the Freedmen’s Bureau and contemporary newspapers, to continue the story and reveal the challenges African Americans faced from former Confederates after the war. He traces their actions, which were shaped uniquely by the volatility of the struggle in this region, to ensure that the war’s emancipationist legacy would survive. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller

Jed Buchanan is one of the Blue Ridge mountain people displaced by the formation of the Shenandoah National Park. Through a quirk of fate he is offered a job as a farm manager on one of the loveliest farms in the Shenandoah Valley. Though he loves the life, dire danger lurks in the form of a fanatical, old-style Ku Klux Klan klavern that has been operating in the rural areas of Northern Virginia. Jed falls in love with two very different women: the beautiful, sultry sophisticate, Virginia Chadwick, whom he saves from being savaged by a vicious dog. This leads to the humble hillbilly giving regular lectures to one of the most powerful groups in Washington DC., Then theres lovely, spunky Sage Kelly, who has left three men at the altar. However, Jed has good reason to suspect that she and her brother, Tom, are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Sequel to the widely acclaimed "Falling Leaves and Mountain Ashes", this compelling epic novel, set in the1940s and 1950s, displays once again what a master storyteller George is.

The author weaves a suspenseful, dramatic, historical saga of ambition, love, murder, and one family's tragedy and triumph through the latter part of the Civil War. There are several intriguing twists in the plot: cowardice, obsession, hypocrisy, from dual simulation, that surprise and challenge the family of their leader caught up in their two worlds of avarice, rapacity, insatiable greed and lust. While the war ravages on amid the stormy, personal lives of the people, while we see those depredations only add to the mayhem, we are reminded there are no pristine priests. Still, this book is very inspiring to anyone whose Christian ideals are beyond compromise.