Beyond the Civil War Hospital helps readers understand Reconstruction as a period of emotional turmoil that precipitated a struggle for form in cultural production. By treating selected texts from that era as multifaceted contributions to Reconstruction's "mental adaptation process" (Leslie Butler), Kirsten Twelbeck diagnoses individual conflicts between the "heart and the brain" only partly compensated for by a shared concern for national healing. By tracing each text's individual adaptation of the healing trope, she identifies surprising disagreement over racial equality, women's rights, and citizenship. The book pairs female and male white authors from the antislavery North, and brings together a broad range of genres.