Eunice

This book combines the historical treasure trove of the author's eyewitness accounts of war and Reconstruction in South Carolina with his literary plot about a Southern woman choosing love over conventional expectations. Eunice opens with the burning of Columbia on February 17, 1865, as drawn from Rivers's own first-hand experience of the event. Wade Hampton and his Red Shirts, the Ku Klux Klan, African Americans, and carpetbaggers (corrupt and honorable alike) inhabit Rivers's fictional world. The novel centers on Eunice DeLesline, a Southern belle impoverished by the war and faced with divergent visions of Southern masculinity in the forms of Willie Barton - a son of the Old South - and Colonel Loyle - a self-made Confederate captain - each vying for her hand in marriage. A carpetbagger's plot to kidnap Eunice drives the action and presents Rivers with ample opportunity to voice his opinions on race, gender, and power in this transitional period in American history.