Authors: Ann Rinaldi
At home for good now, he became, with Martha, a force in the community and, though public office was denied to all who had fought for the Confederacy, he became the "point man" for all those who had been driven out of Missouri by Order Number 11 and whose property
was now in the infamous "burnt district." He helped them get their property back and start to rebuild. He also became unofficial historian of Quantrill's band, kept in touch with the ex-bushwhackers, and attended all the reunions. He lived until 1913.
Juliet Bradshaw:
After the war, Juliet went back to school as her brother wished, in the local schoolhouse, then attended Miss Fishburn's Academy for Young Ladies, comparable to todays high school for girls, in the local area. Juliet felt that she had seen and learned more than Miss Fishburn could ever teach her, and that she'd poured enough tea for sick soldiers, on their way home, to teach Miss Fishburn a thing or two, but Seth made her go. She hated it.
She was thirteen when she fell in love with one soldier her sister-in-law Martha took in on his way home. He needed nursing and feeding and Juliet was hopelessly smitten with the young man, who was all of twenty. He was from Virginia. And if Seth hadn't been home, she would have eloped with him, but he was, so she didn't.
She had turned into a beautiful young teenager, with experience beyond her years. She loved her nieces and nephews, took piano lessons, and went with Seth and
Martha to all the Quantrill reunions, where she flirted with Jesse James. She even followed his career in crime, the way she used to follow the career of Sue Mundy.
But the Yankee she had killed still haunted her and was the real underlying reason for her wildness. (She once rode one of Seth's prized Thoroughbred horses without permission and almost killed herself.) And this was when the haunting of the Yankee came to the fore.
When she told Seth and Martha that she wanted to go to Pennsylvania to meet Heffinger's family and apologize to them, they were horrified and said no. "You're a Confederate," Seth said. "You're hated up there. Besides, you're only fourteen."
Juliet went anyway. She literally ran away with Heidi, the daughter of one of the hired help, a German girl from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who offered to go with her. They found the Heffinger home and were welcomed by a surprised and saddened family. Jeffrey Heffinger was the oldest son. His brother, Caleb, was home and took the girls on a tour of the still raw and ugly Gettysburg grounds.
He was twenty. Juliet fell for him. Before two days were up, an angry Seth arrived, ready to tear Juliet to
pieces, but Caleb and his parents calmed him down, saying, "Her gesture was so beautiful, coming here to apologize for killing Jeffrey. It mended things so well. If all of us on both sides did this, it would help heal the nation."
When Juliet returned home, Seth kept her under lockup (she was grounded for a year), but she and Caleb started a written correspondence that, years later, led to marriage.
N
OWHERE IN YOUNG ADULT FICTION HAVE
I
EVER COME
across the story about the Southern girls who were kin to Quantrill's Raiders in the Civil War being sent to a Yankee prison in Kansas City, Kansas, where the building collapsed and most of the girls were killed. The fact that most of them were teenagers gravitated me to the story. Why had nobody written about this for young adults?
I plunged right in and started my research. The result is this book, which deals not only with the prison collapse, but with William Clarke Quantrill's bushwhackers, as fascinating a group of beloved scoundrels as ever graced the pages of any novel. Of course they were Confederates, but that did not give them the right to burn, loot, and kill the way they did, unless you discover that they were only doing it in the way the Yankees burned, looted, and killed. It was war.
Along the way I invented as good a group of characters as I ever had with the Bradshaw family. And I developed a whole plotline with the introduction of Sue Mundy, the "girl" who disguised herself as a man and fought with Quantrill, the "girl" who was really a man to begin with and whom my twelve-year-old protagonist adored. Sue Mundy was a cult figure of her time. In today's world she'd be on the front page of all the supermarket tabloids.
As to whether Sue Mundy was really a double agent for the Yankees is speculation, invented by me to make her even more interesting. Remember, this is a novel
based
on the Grand Avenue prison collapse and the Quantrill bushwhackers. In that same mode the names of the Anderson girls (all of whom really lived) are as close as I can discern them to be. Every research book I read gave the girls different names and ages. Some had a Josephine in the group, some did not. I do not have a Josephine. So, if I am incorrect in my interpretation, please forgive me.
All the main characters in the book are real with the
exception of the Bradshaws; Maxine; the Yankee, Heffinger, whom Juliet shoots; and Mr. Addison, from whom she buys her cow. Jesse James started his outlaw career in Quantrill's Raiders, and after the war his brother Frank asked for a pardon but Jesse never did. He became, instead, a noted and infamous cult-figure outlaw of the times.
"Bloody Bill" Anderson really was nicknamed that, because after the Grand Avenue prison collapsed and he lost three of his sisters (Mary eventually died, too), he went crazy, literally. He really did keep a ribbon on his horse, with one notch in it for every man he killed. He kept, also, a collection of scalps. He killed and maimed unnecessarily. After his death, people came to stare at his body and cut off locks of his hair.
This was a violent, dramatic, romantic, and flowery time as far as people's actions and speech and emotions went. They held nothing back but gave vent freely to their feelings, as I have tried to have my characters do in this book.
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