In a scene central to the book, whites in the town of Hamburg take umbrage at being subject to a militia of African-American troops. The former slaveowners are reaping what they have sown, particularly in South Carolina, which was home to some of the largest slaveholders in the country. The necessity for reinvention continues after the war, in a South where those who were once slaves are now in power, holding majorities in the legislatures and serving as law enforcers. Sarah and her family are in ongoing flight, and the horrors of war make their indelible mark upon Francis, highlighting the constantly shifting backdrop against which this novel takes place. The author portrays reinvention prior to and throughout the war in many ways, beginning with Francis changing his name.

Taken as a whole, the couple’s story reads as a reflection of America in the years after the Civil War, defined by reinvention, race, and the ideal of honor. However, the book is much more than just a simple romance. In a letter to her, he writes that his “lips refuse to be sealed & can no more refrain from telling their love for you & to you than they can cease to breathe the fragrant breath of life.” Their narrative continues until the end, each sensing what the other is thinking, as if their two minds are one.

She met Francis through her brother, who was a soldier.Īt the core of the novel is the love story between Sarah and Francis.

Sarah’s previously well-to-do family, having lost everything in the war, fled Baton Rouge, keeping just ahead of Union bombardment.

Impressed by the states’ rights aspect of the Confederate cause, Reeks left England on a Confederate ship to join their cavalry, changing his name to avoid bringing disgrace upon his family. The author brings to life the stories of her great-grandparents Francis Warrington Dawson and Sarah Morgan Dawson - he the editor of the Charleston News and Courier, and she the author of A Confederate Girl’s Diary.įrancis was born Austin John Reeks in London. It can be challenging to create a fictionalized account of people who achieved moderate fame in their own lifetimes, but this is what Roxana Robinson attempts to do in her new novel, Dawson’s Fall.

록사나 by Kin