Two Girls of Gettysburg (48 page)

It was a visit to Gettysburg with my family six years ago that made me want to write a novel about the Civil War. I was fascinated by the photographs of civilians on one wall of the Visitor’s Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. Each of their lives was marked with tragedy and moments of heroism due to the battle that unfolded at their very doorsteps. I had never before thought about the ordinary people who were caught up in the war, and I wanted to write about their fears, their sacrifices, and their everyday joys. Lizzie and Rosanna took shape as opposites, two halves of a divided country, and in them I tried to imagine the opportunities for heroism in the lives of two girls coming of age during the most shattering events of our American history.

In three days at Gettysburg, nearly eight thousand soldiers died, and another thirty-seven thousand were wounded, captured, or missing. Jennie Wade was the only civilian killed. When writing fiction about the Civil War, one can invent scenes of battlefield bravery, human tragedy, freakish accidents, and near miraculous escapes, only to discover, with enough reading, that something even more amazing or terrible actually happened. Yes, this book is a work of fiction, but everything in it could have occurred just as described to real, historical people living between June 1861 and November 1863, when the cataclysmic Civil War touched the lives of every man, woman, and child in our divided nation.

For Further Reading and Research

Bates, Samuel P.
History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–5.
Harrisburg, PA: B. 1869–71. Available online at
www.pacivilwar.com
.

Bennett, Gerald R.
Days of “Uncertainty and Dread”: The Ordeal Endured by the Citizens at Gettysburg.
Littlestown, PA: Gerald R. Bennett, 1994.

Billings, John D.
Hardtack and Coffee: or the Unwritten Story of Army Life.
Boston, 1887. G.M. Smith & Co.

Bloom, Robert L. “ ‘We Never Expected a Battle’: The Civilians at Gettysburg, 1863.”
Pennsylvania History 55,
no. 4 (October 1988): 161–200.

Brodhead, Sarah.
The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, from June 15 to July 15, 1863.
Privately printed. (Copy in State Library of Ohio).

Catton, Bruce.
The Civil War.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller.
Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.
Edited by C. Vann Woodward. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Coco, Gregory A.
A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1995.

Conklin, E. F., ed.
Women at Gettysburg, 1863.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1995.

Denney, Robert E.
Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded.
New York: Sterling, 1994.

Eicher, David J.
Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History.
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003.

Faust, Drew Gilpin.
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Frassanito, William A.
Early Photography at Gettysburg.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1995.

———.
Gettysburg Then & Now: Touring the Battlefield with Old Photos, 1863–1889.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1996.

History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania.
Chicago: Warner, Beers, 1886.

John Dooley, Confederate Soldier: His War Journal.
Edited by Joseph T. Durkin. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1945.

Leisch, Juanita.
An Introduction to the Civil War Civilians.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1994.

Minnigh, Henry N.
History of Company K.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1998.

Pember, Phoebe Yates.
A Southern Woman’s Story.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.

Sheldon, George.
When the Smoke Cleared at Gettysburg: The Tragic Aftermath of the Bloodiest Battle of the Civil War.
Nashville: Cumberland House, 2003.

Small, Cindy L.
The Jennie Wade Story.
Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1991.

Volo, Dorothy D.
Daily Life in Civil War America.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Wheeler, Richard.
Gettysburg, 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes.
New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999.

Wills, Garry.
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Web Sites:

www.civilwarmed.org
(National Museum of Civil War Medicine)

www.americancivilwar.com
(timelines, battles, people)

www.nps.gov/gett
(Gettysburg National Military Park)

www.civil-war.net
(outstanding site for research; many photographs)

acknowledgments

I wish to thank Julie Romeis and Melanie Cecka, gifted editors, along with the Bloomsbury staff—particularly, Sandy, Jill, Melissa, Jennifer, and Donna. And, of course, dear Carolyn French, my agent. Finally, Rob, David, and Adam, for putting up with a wife and mother who is sometimes absent from the here and now.

ALSO BY LISA KLEIN

Ophelia

Copyright © 2008 by Lisa Klein

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published in the United States of America in October 2008
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
E-book edition published in April 2011
www.bloomsburykids.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Klein, Lisa M.

Two girls of Gettysburg / Lisa Klein.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When the Civil War breaks out, two cousins, Lizzie and Rosanna, find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict until the war re unites them in the town of Gettysburg.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59990-105-3 • ISBN-10: 1-59990-105-6 (hardcover)
1. Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863—Juvenile fiction. [1. Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863—Fiction. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Cousins—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K678342Tw 2008       [Fic]—dc22       2008010322

ISBN 978-1-59990-805-2 (e-book)