The Civil War continues to haunt us. As it should. I am especially haunted, since as a Southerner I experience profound shame at the South's refusal to end slavery and the cultural trauma of that apartheid. Here the indomitable Jane Walker explores the siege of Vicksburg in fiction. This novel brings alive the utter horror of a senseless war.
Janisse Ray, poet and writer
When General Ulysses Grant tries to capture the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, he finally settles on a 47-day siege which subjects the citizenry and soldiers to starvation and disease. Elise at Vicksburg is an historical novel about an eighteen-year-old girl who lives through the siege in a cave, along with other residents of the town. She and her family are told that Vicksburg is unconquerable, since it sits hundreds of feet above the Mississippi River on the West and has rolling, steep hills on the East, which would deter any army. Elise is a fun-loving girl when she arrives at Vicksburg, but she matures into a woman during the horrific siege, falling in love with a soldier who does everything in his power to woo and protect her. However, a mystery surrounds this soldier.