The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

This is a common story told in an uncommon way. We learn about the horrors of the Civil War through letters between family members both during and after the war. Placidia (Dia) Hockaday is the young bride who is left after two days of wedlock to run the rural farm and care for a toddler from her new husband's first marriage. It is here that she learns brief love, pain and endurance the two years her husband is fighting. There is no happy homecoming as he finds out that the child she bore out of wedlock and hid, has died. Dia is taken into custody and we then learn the truth through letters and her journal. Quietly engaging, this is a well researched look at the struggles of war.