Tranquilla

Tranquilla Taylor should have been a pampered Southern belle, and indeed was courted by two suitors who were best friends. But this hard-riding, straight-shooting rebel scandalized Mississippi planter society by learning Latin, mathematics, the classics. She freed her inherited slaves, worked the fields alongside two husbands, both tragically murdered, and held her family together despite war, poverty, and too much death.She lost two infant sons, raised nine children, then lost her father, a gifted daughter and a husband in a few wrenching months on the eve of the Civil War. And a gentle son at Gettysburg, who had helped her hold the plantation together.Her daughters were belles with blisters on their hands, and her sons were forced to grow up too soon. There was the doctor, driven to alcoholism by the carnage of Shiloh. Two daughters married doctors, and one was denied medical school because she was a woman. Her land changed hands 32 times during the war, and her house was raided, set afire. Her son's fiancée was attacked, beaten.Tranquilla's best friend and former maid, who was involved in helping escaped slaves, endured it all beside her into old age, both iron-willed, defiant.

Tranquilla Taylor McRaven, widowed twice, educated and freed her inherited slaves, amid censure and condemnation in 1800s Mississippi. She bore eleven children, held her family together through loss, conflict, tragedy, with head held high. She talked often with God, argued with Him, but never left Him. Her first husband was axe-murdered in bed beside her by a tormented slave, her second killed in aiding runaways. She lost two infant sons, then her closest daughter before the Civil War, then her poet son at Gettysburg. She was a fearless rider, hunter, even a blacksmith, and she worked in the fields along with her children and the hired hands. She was well-educated at a time women had few rights or had their opinions sought or listened to, and she spoke out on everything from politics to race relations.

The war that none of them wanted rages around them, although the ending is nearing, with its losses, its devastation. Tranquilla must hold as much together as she can: her people, the land, remnants of the Old South's legacy. Her daughters are belles with blisters on their hands, and the last of her children work beside her in the fields with the few hired hands. They must hold on, endure, then face the task of rebuilding. It is hard, but it has always been hard, and she is no stranger to adversity. Her one goal is to see that all her children are as secure as possible in the chaos of Mississippi Reconstruction, in some ways worse than the war itself. As the men come home-those who are left-they face the future with her still leading, still tireless, still undaunted. She must not give up, cannot give up yet. Or ever.