Tune in to XTRA 99.1FM to hear the author interviewed by Neal
Steele on CBW's re-scheduled Monthly broadcast, May 23rd at
about
8:05AM. If you miss the live broadcast, return here for the
podcast.
About the Book
Mama, I Am Yet Still Alive
is a groundbreaking
study of life in the Confederacy during 1863 and a companion
volume to No Soap, No Pay, Diarrhea, Dysentery &
Desertion.
Civil War studies normally focus on military battles,
campaigns, generals and politicians, with the common
Confederate soldiers and Southern civilians receiving only
token mention. Using personal accounts from more than two
hundred forty soldiers, farmers, clerks, nurses, sailors,
farm girls, merchants, surgeons, chaplains and wives, author
Jeff Toalson has created a compilation that is remarkable in
its simplicity and stunning in its scope.
These soldiers and civilians wrote remarkable letters and
kept astonishing diaries and journals. They discuss
disease, slavery, inflation, religion, desertion, blockade
running, and their never-ending hope that the war would end
before their loved ones died. Most of these unpublished
documents were made available by the Brewer Library of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy.
With this, his third significant contribution to Civil
War literature, Jeff Toalson joins the select company of
Thomas W. Cutrer and Bell I. Wiley as historians who have
devoted their body of work to preserving the ‘voices’ of
common Confederate soldiers and civilians.
Missouri native Jeff
Toalson earned a BS in business management from Missouri
State University.
After the successful 2006 release of No Soap, No Pay,
Diarrhea, Dysentery & Desertion, a groundbreaking study
of life during the final sixteen months of the
Confederacy, Jeff began work on the wartime letters of
Richard and Mary Watkins.
Entitled
Send Me a Pair of Old Boots and Kiss My Little Girls:
The Civil War Letters of Richard and
Mary Watkins, 1861-1865, the second book, with
the collaboration of CBW member and playwright, Rob Ruffin, was
turned into a successful play first performed in Gloucester.
Entitled
Send Me a Pair of Old Boots and Kiss My Little Girls:
The Civil War Letters of Richard and
Mary Watkins, 1861-1865, the second book, with
the collaboration of CBW member and playwright, Rob Ruffin, was
turned into a successful play first performed in Gloucester.