The Bravest Girl in Sharpsburg

THE BRAVEST GIRL IN SHARPSBURG by Kathleen Ernst Madeline L'Engle once said that when she was pondering a difficult question, she would write a novel for young adults on it. In that tradition, Kathleen Ernst explores the nature of courage in THE BRAVEST GIRL IN SHARPSBURG. She centers her story around what has been called the bloodiest day in American history-September 17, 1862 when the people of Sharpsburg, Maryland found themselves embroiled forever in the Civil War. Told alternately in the voices of sisters Bethie and Teresa Kretzer, whose family sympathies lie with the Union, and their friend Savilla Miller, whose family is for the Confederacy, it begins when seamstress Teresa fashions a magnificent version of the stars and stripes and sends the banner waving over the town's main street, in defiance of her neighbors' neutral or South leaning politics. It ends in all three girls' involvement in the war as Lee's army crosses the Potomac and into their lives. Along the way, Kathleen Ernst's skill and compassionate heart invites lucky readers into a world of threads binding sisters and brothers and friends, where a blacksmith farmer introduces his boldest daughter with "she's got sand" , where women get "belled up" for festivities one day and scrap their knuckles bloody as they turn heirloom damask tablecloths into lint for bandages, another. Savilla, Bethie, Teresa and their kinswomen feed grateful soldiers who are "skinny as stray dogs in winter," act as Confederate spies, are courted by a pacifist and men of both sides of the conflict, and assist conductors on the Underground Railroad. Ernst adds a unique new chapter to Civil War stories, giving voice to the usually voiceless casualties of that conflict: a wide-eyed boy killed by a mob when he was on the wrong road at the wrong time, the fleeing widowed refugees fearing reprisals against themselves and their children, the soldiers and civilians downed by fever, accidents, or their own comrades, and the citizens of Sharpsburg who endured the shelling of that infamous day. Through it all, this powerful novel brings the painful choices of a border state dramatically to life. In Author's Notes both fine scholarship and honor and affection for the people and events on which the novel is based are in evidence. And who was the bravest girl in Sharpsburg? Kathleen Ernst has wisely left that up to her young readers to decide. --Eileen Charbonneau, author of HONOR TO THE HILLS