Customer Reviews

Southern Cross

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Southern Cross by Madeline M. Dale is a gentle and genteely written story of Mrs. Dale's Kentucky forebears during the War between the States. Apart from the fact that it is a superb "read", drawing a reader eagerly from chapter to chapter to see what happens next, it also rewards the reader with fresh insights and glimpses into historical facts.

Adult readers can appreciate this novel; in addition it has appeal for young readers. I particularly rejoiced to find it one that might be recommended for secondary school reading lists. As the English curriculum specialist for a number of years for the forty secondary schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, I collaborated with heads of the English departments to develop recommended reading lists for each grade (and skills) level of our unified curriculum. The task was not simple, as you can imagine, cofronting not only a mutiplicity of teachers' opinions and students' diverse reading abilities and preferences, but also the sometimes censorious judgements of individuals in the community. Without hesitation, I would urge that Mrs. Dale's Southern Cross be included in school reading lists.

Books bring understanding of people, places and times apart from our own sphere. The people in Mrs. Dale's novel are worth coming to know--foregrounded against the tug-of-war between their everyday subsistence, loyalty to home, and moral sensibilty, and the burden of slavery. I recommend it highly.

A story based on facts as remembered by the great granddaughter of a tobacco farmer in rural Kentucky. An intimate account of the thoughts, purposes and struggles of one family facing the brutality of being torn apart by a national conflict that bled the nation. A personal account of slavery and how people who opposed it coped with being slave owners themselves, the cross that many Southerners had to bear. After the war they could not vote, could get no financial help and had no rights. There was no Marshall Plan for the South. Birth, death, war, prison, financial ruin, and a new start reveal life as it was in the 19th century in America's heartland.