Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 20:20:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Jim and Bev Wiggins
Subject: Suzy Barile at library Dec 16
The Friends of the Chatham Community Library invite you to be with us on Thursday, December 16th at 7:30 – 9:00pm at the Chatham Community Library for a most interesting evening with North Carolina writer Suzy Barile, author of Undaunted Heart – The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General.
When Sherman’s victorious army marched into Chapel Hill the day after Easter 1865, the Civil War had just ended and President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. Citizens of the picturesque North Carolina college town had endured years of hardship and sacrifice, and now the Union army was patrolling its streets. One of Sherman’s young generals paid a visit to the stately home of David Swain, president of the University of North Carolina and a former governor, to inform him that the town was now under Union occupation.
Against this unlikely backdrop began a passionate and controversial love story. When President Swain’s daughter Ella met the Union general, life for these two young people who had spent the war on opposite sides was forever altered.
Author Suzy Barile, a great-great-granddaughter of Ella Swain and Smith Atkins, tells the true story of their famous courtship and marriage. Interwoven throughout Undaunted Heart are excerpts from Ella’s letters to her parents that reveal a loving marriage that transcended differences and scandal.
After a 25-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor, our guest Suzy Barile now teaches English and journalism at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh. She is a graduate of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at UNC-Chapel Hill, and earned a master’s degree from NC State University.
The Chatham Community Library is located at 197 Hwy. 87North, on the Pittsboro campus of Central Carolina Community College. You can access convenient parking from the new roundabout on 87 North, facing the library.
All Friends programs are held in the Holmes Family Meeting Room in the library and are free and open to the public.
Please visit the Friends website www.friendsofthechathamcommunitylibrary.org/
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Jim and Beverly Wiggins