While hanging out at the Bennett Place on Sunday, becoming 1 copy closer to cementing my best seller status, I had the opportunity to talk with author and historian Brenda McKean. I picked up a copy of volume one of her two part reference work on North Carolina civilians during the War for Southern Independence. If you are looking for information about the home front during this war, this is your book. Read an excerpt here. Here is a brief description of “Blood and War at my Doorstep”:

“Between these pages the reader will learn that North Carolina citizens did not idly stand by as their soldiers marched off to war. The women worked themselves into “patriotic exhaustion” through Aid Societies. Civilians with different means of support from the lower class to the plantation mistress wrote the governor complaining of hoarding, speculation, the tithe, bushwhackers, unionism, conscription, and exemptions. Never before had so many died due to guerilla warfare. Unknown before starving women with weapons stormed the merchant or warehouses in search for food. Others turned to smuggling, spying, or nature’s oldest profession. Information from period newspapers, as well as mostly unpublished letters, tell their stories.”