English society in the 1850s encouraged women to act demurely and stay at home, not follow their husbands into combat. Even if Fanny Duberly, the unorthodox author of this best-selling book, noticed that her actions were raising disapproving Victorian eyebrows, that didn't stop her from riding straight into one of the most brutal wars of the 19th century. She was just 25 when her husband, Captain Henry Duberly, was ordered into battle. Rather than remain at home, the avid horsewoman announced that she was packing her side-saddle and going with Henry to Russia's Crimean Peninsula. The intrepid amateur war correspondent spent the next two years camped alongside her husband and his troops during the course of their brutal campaign. What she saw and recorded in letters home to her sister shocked the English world, for there was little glory but plenty of death. Cholera slew elite officers and lowly enlisted men alike. Horses starved. The wounded lay untended. The dead went unburied. Allies argued. Incompetence was rampant. Fascinating, remarkable, courageous, mysterious, sympathetic, Fanny Duberly was the Victorian heroine deluxe and this is the true story of her astonishing adventure.