Macaria

Published in 1864 at the height of the American Civil War, this novel by Augusta J. Evans follows two Southern women, Irene and Electra, as they search for purpose in a Confederacy emptied of its men. Evans sets aside the marriage plot that governed most fiction of her day and asks instead what a woman’s life can mean on its own terms, through art, intellect, faith, and sacrifice for a cause. The book became one of the Confederacy’s biggest wartime sellers, printed on coarse paper and smuggled through the Union blockade; a Federal commander reportedly ordered copies burned among his troops. It reads today as both a period argument for female self-reliance and a revealing document of the Southern home front and the ideals it clung to during the war.