Ann Rinaldi (1934–2021)

"Mama and I were Southerners, but not Rebels. We were for the Union but not the Yankees. You have to be from Maryland to understand it."

(I love this quote because I think of Maryland as part of the North. They never serve me sweet tea when I'm there and that's the deciding factor, isn't it?)

Amelia's War by Ann Rinaldi is a fictionalized account of the real-life ransoming of Hagerstown, Maryland by CSA Brigadier General McCausland in July 1864.
As a southern girl, I knew about Sherman's march show more to the sea and I had heard the famous story of how Savannah escaped the torch, but I never knew that towns had been blackmailed for money. We all know that war is horrible, but this just brought another facet of the horror into focus for me.
I tell myself that I read Rinaldi's young-adult books because I love her style but it seems she can teach adults a little history too. show less

"Father, what matters? What people think? Or what’s true?"

Sarah Revere is the daughter of the famous Paul Revere. I think this is one of Rinaldi's best, and that's saying something. She has such a gift for blending fact and fiction, reality and imagination so seamlessly that you become completely wrapped up in the story. I learn more from Rinaldi's books than the best history book could ever hope to convey; she brings these characters to life in a way few other authors can manage.

While the Union and the Confederacy are warring against each other in America, President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. But Texans keep their enslaved laborers from hearing about it, a fact that will impact Luli Holcomb and the sister she never thought of as a slave in Come Juneteenth by author Ann Rinaldi.

This is my first time reading this author since back in my teens, when her novels matured and sharpened my taste for historical fiction, especially concerning American show more history.

Knowing the kind of hard-hitting and poignant young adult stories Rinaldi can deliver, I probably should have been better prepared emotionally for this story of injustice, violence, and human relationships. Although my interest in the read waned here and there, the parts that got me, got me.

Now, it's important to know this isn't a story told from the perspective of African American characters, and it isn't about a big Juneteenth celebration. Nor is it a simplistic, romantic painting of the Civil War and Reconstruction that depicts all white Yankees as completely good and noble and all white Southerners as completely wicked and backward. Rather, it's a story of flawed human beings and what happens when you have to face where you, and other people in the place you fondly call home, have been profoundly wrong.

This is a tragic novel. Still, it has glimmers of hope for healing and learning from the past. show less

A well-crafted fictional account of the family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys in late nineteenth century America, told from the perspective of the youngest McCoy daughter Fanny.

I really took to Fanny's narrative, which reminded me a lot of Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird ('I stood around the edges and watched and they paid me no nevermind'), and Ann Rinaldi's evocative storytelling shapes the historical names and events into believable characters and personal tragedy. I also love show more the colloquial phrases she employs, like 'You look like the hind wheels of bad luck' and 'nervous as an ugly girl at a box-supper auction', which add local flavour and humour to an otherwise dark tale.

Fanny's sister Roseanna, who is said to have kicked off the feud by eloping with a Hatfield, takes to crafting the 'coffin quilt' of the title, with all the family names stitched onto coffins around the border, to be moved into the centre when somebody dies. A suitably morbid symbol for a beleaguered family. show less