Two Girls of Gettysburg
Grade 6–9—In 1861, the Confederacy has just declared its independence from the Union, but life goes on much as usual in the quiet town of Gettysburg. Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Allbauer and her cousin Rosanna, recently arrived from Virginia, have big plans to attend the Ladies' Seminary together in the fall. Then Lizzie's father and brother enlist in the Union army and she must stay home to help her mother run the family butcher shop. Rosanna flees back to Richmond after a Gettysburg beau is killed in one of the early battles. Torn between her romanticized view of the war and her parents' conservative rules, Rosanna impulsively agrees to marry a former beau, John Wilcox. Within a month of marriage, he is injured, and Rosanna rushes to meet up with the Virginia Infantry so that she can care for him. Realizing that she has a gift for healing, she stays on with her husband's company as a nurse. Chapters alternate between Rosanna's journal entries of her life as a Confederate nurse and Lizzie's accounts of the events leading up to the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. While Klein's extensive research is evident, the alternating voices have only limited success: readers will be drawn to Lizzie's genuine warmth, but frivolous Rosanna's leap to the ultra-responsible wife and nurse and the stilted dialogues in her journal entries stretch credibility. Still, Klein's weaving of the young women's stories to a shared conclusion gives a fresh perspective on the complexities of the Civil War.—Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.