The story was for her own good. No matter how many times Cal Collins repeats this he still regrets breaking Cassandra Brennan's heart. Yet what choice did he have all those years ago? The truth would have destroyed her family. But Cassie is back in her South Georgia home once more, and Cal is rethinking that decision. From the moment they meet again all those intense feelings reignite and he wants another chance. First, he'll have to win her trust, which means revealing the truth. Then he can prove that a future with him is for her own good now.

The reconciliation of North and South following the Civil War depended as much on cultural imagination as on the politics of Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nina Silber documents the transformation from hostile sectionalism to sentimental reunion rhetoric. Northern culture created a notion of reconciliation that romanticized and feminized southern society. In tourist accounts, novels, minstrel shows, and popular magazines, northerners contributed to a mythic and nostalgic picture of the South that served to counter their anxieties regarding the breakdown of class and gender roles in Gilded Age America. Indeed, for many Yankees, the ultimate symbol of the reunion process, and one that served to reinforce Victorian values as well as northern hegemony, was the marriage of a northern man and a southern woman. Southern men also were represented as affirming traditional gender roles. As northern men wrestled with their nation's increasingly global and aggressive foreign policy, the military virtues extolled in Confederate legend became more admired than reviled. By the 1890s, concludes Silber, northern whites had accepted not only a newly resplendent image of Dixie but also a sentimentalized view of postwar reunion.

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Family reunions are special occasions, a time of connections, reflections, of meeting new members, remembering those no longer with us, more than a little gossip (a good reason not to miss one if you don't want to be the one talked about!) and (mostly) good-natured kidding, occasional recriminations and grievances aired or confined to knowing side glances, and perhaps most importantly, the chance to pass on and keep alive the history and lore of the family from one generation to the next. Grace C. Ocasio's FAMILY REUNION is all of these things, and in reading this book we are privileged guests at just such an event, invited to hear the stories of her relatives across multiple generations. Because this is an account of an African-American family, it is necessarily in part a chronicle of racism and injustice and thus a contribution to the poetry of documentary witness. There are moments of tragedy (a child permanently brain damaged by being dropped by a nurse at birth) and indignity (a woman denied a PhD by Harvard because of her race), but also triumphs (one man becomes a celebrated physician, and many in the family graduate from college and go on to successful professional careers--including the author). These poems speak candidly of the experience of being Black in America. But that is not all that they do. What they reveal most of all is how this one family's story manages to be both uniquely their own and simultaneously universal, because we can all recognize ourselves and our own messy histories in these pages, whatever our race or origin. We've all encountered that uncle, that grandmother in our own families; we've heard the lectures (or given them ourselves) on hair and clothing, behavior and expectations, the suitability of suitors, all the friction at generational boundaries. Now, more than ever, we need to be reminded that we are all one family--however dysfunctional. To say that Ocasio does this with grace may be a pun, but it is also the truth. The book ends with a brief prose account of a family reunion that is hilariously chaotic, leaving the author with "hysteria welling in my throat." Well, that's family for you! But what a treat it is to get to know this one.

When the invitation to the Preffyn family reunion arrives interrupting a perfectly decent summer vacation, 15-year-old Shelley Wollcott is anything but enthusiastic. It’s not that Shelley has anything against her relatives, she just can’t stand it when they give her that “what a pity” look. It’s not her fault that her real mother walked out on the family or that her father has remarried yet again. With Dad away on business and her older sister visiting their mother in Paris, Shelley must face the “perfect” Preffyns’ reunion with only her prankster younger brother and her insecure new stepmother at her side. It’s an opportunity to uncover the family’s secrets, but Shelley isn’t sure whether, when she discovers the truth, she’ll laugh or cry. In this funny and poignant novel by Caroline B. Cooney, Shelley learns to appreciate all the members of her unusual family—including herself!—in ways she never anticipated. And she discovers things are often not as perfect as they seem.

Between the era of America's landmark antebellum compromises and that of the Compromise of 1877, a war had intervened, destroying the integrity of the Southern system but failing to determine the New South's relation to the Union. While it did not restore the old order in the South, or restore the South to parity with the Union, it did lay down the political foundations for reunion, bring Reconstruction to an end, and shape the future of four million freedmen. Originally published in 1951, this classic work by one of America's foremost experts on Southern history presents an important new interpretation of the Compromise, forcing historians to revise previous attitudes towards the Reconstruction period, the history of the Republican party, and the realignment of forces that fought the Civil War. Because much of the negotiating occurred in secrecy, historians have known less about this Compromise than others before it. Now reissued with a new introduction by Woodward, Reunion and Reaction gives us the other half of the story.

Return to the bestselling Beach House series with Mary Alice Monroe’s tale of the struggles and triumphs of the historic Rutledge family of South Carolina. “Authentic, generous, and heartfelt” (Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author), this is an illuminating story of new beginnings, resilience, and one family’s enduring love. Cara Rutledge returns to her Southern home on the idyllic Isle of Palms. Comforting in its familiarity, it is still rife with painful memories. Only through reconnecting with family, friends, and the rhythms of the lowcountry can Cara release the hold of the past and open herself to the possibility of a new career and love. Meanwhile, her niece Linnea, a recent college graduate with an uncertain future, leaves her historic home in Charleston, with all its entitlement and expectations, and heads to her aunt’s beach house. On the island, she is free to join the turtle team, learn to surf, and fall in love. Remembering the lessons of her beloved grandmother, Lovie, the original “turtle lady,” Linnea rediscovers a meaningful purpose to her life and finds the courage she needs to break from tradition. In “this tender and openhearted novel of familial expectations, new boundaries, and the power of forgiveness” (Booklist), three generations of the Rutledge family gather together to find the strength, love, and commitment to break destructive family patterns and to forge new bonds that will endure long beyond one summer reunion.

This cookbook incorporates centuries of history, culture and tradition from the Afro-American community.