THE WEDDING DRESS

Two Civil War widows struggle to make a wedding dress for their younger sister, in romance author Lyn Ellis’s first novel under her given name.

Julia’s husband, Lieutenant William Lovejoy, perished at Gettysburg; Victoria’s bookish, dreamy James was shot in a matter of weeks. The sisters are penniless after the war, but they are determined that Claire, the youngest, will have a wedding dress, even though there scarcely seems to be a man alive to marry. They have given up most of what was considered proper by the standards of a society wiped out by the cruel realities of war and survival, but they won’t give up this notion. A kindly shopkeeper and elderly neighbors provide the materials, yards of lace and pearl buttons; Julia and Victoria begin to sew determinedly. There is no groom, yet the three young women are plagued by ghostly apparitions of Confederate soldiers marching through the woods around Oak Creek Plantation. Then Sergeant Monroe Tacy rides many miles to tell the full story of Lt. Lovejoy’s heroic death and stays on to help the sisters. James returns unexpectedly, not dead but blind. Arliss Edwards, the free man of color who helped James survive, is a skilled woodworker who sees potential in Oak Creek’s innumerable fine trees. He and Monroe begin the arduous tasks that the women were unable to do. To save the plantation from sale, Julia hopes to persuade Monroe to marry Claire, but he isn’t interested in the flighty girl. He asks for Julia’s hand instead but she refuses, assailed by memories of her beloved husband and confused by the passionate emotions stirred up by Monroe’s proposal. Nonetheless, the wedding dress will indeed be worn in the end—twice.

A thoughtful tale, suffused with quiet southern pride and an old-fashioned womanliness.