EXILE TO SWEET DIXIE

A thoroughly researched but ultimately unreadable diary of a Civil War—era nurse and smuggler, edited by Conklin, a Gettysburg battlefield guide and lecturer on women in the Civil War. Euphemia Goldsborough (“Pheme,” as the editor calls her), born to a prosperous Maryland family, was 24 at the onset of the Civil War. In a diary and in a journal called a “hospital book,” she recorded her experiences as a nurse in a hospital and in a Union camp for captured Confederate soldiers (she smuggled letters and parcels to the prisoners). While Goldsborough is a fairly lively writer and offers new information on such topics as the role of women nurses at Gettysburg and Confederate women in Baltimore, as well as the treatment of female prisoners, there is far more irrelevant detail here than even the most ardent Civil War buff would ever care to read. The “hospital book” offers little more than a catalog of injuries and deaths of Confederate soldiers. An important historical document, but not for general readers. (photos, not seen)