Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War

In 1861 the Bartons and the Joneses, related by marriage, lived in Virginia's Shenandoah valley. The extended family was prominent, prosperous and loyal to the Southern cause. Twelve of the men served in the Confederate army, and everyone else worked the farms that fed the Army of Northern Virginia. Freelance historian Colt, a descendant of the clan, integrates material from two memoirs, a diary, two firsthand battle accounts and more than 200 letters in a vivid portrait conveying the human costs of war. The town of Winchester changed hands 13 times, and by 1865 the Shenandoah was a wasteland. The author explains the Confederacy's endurance more successfully than many academic treatises. Illustrations. (June)