Dear Nell: The True Story of the Haven Sisters

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Dear Nell: The True Story of the Haven Sisters is the story of two sisters from New York City, one of whom (Ellen, or Nell) marries into a prominent plantation circle of relatives in Louisiana just prior to the Civil War. As such, Ellen is transported into a different culture and a different world – a world which will soon be blown apart by this country’s worst maelstrom. Seen through the intimacy of a remarkable personal correspondence (selected from over 1400 letters ), a story unfolds which reveals the effects of the Civil War on each and every of them – and on their two families now separated by an unbridgeable gulf. Through it all, the two sisters remain loyal to their sibling tie, in spite of arduous struggles, grievous misunderstandings and tests of faith.

Fanny and Ellen’s personal histories, articulated with astonishing intelligence and perspective, stand for a much wider account of our country’s travails all through that time of unprecedented challenge. The ability to articulate and keep up a correspondence nuance the use of the written word is a lost art and could also be both novel for, and a marvel to, today’s readers. The effects of the Civil War on the families, their livelihoods, and, in the South, on their very identity, come alive in their words. Punctuated by details small and large, by humor, love, harsh economic realities, women’s roles, and by the anguish caused by death, poverty and mental illness, it is a rare glimpse into a past (but ever present) time.

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