"Hodes reconstructs the intriguing and unusual life of Eunice Richardson Stone Connolly. a mill laborer in mid — 19th-century New England who went South with her husband to seek their fortune; homesick, even as her husband fought for the Confederacy, she returned to New Hampshire, where she was reduced to working as a washerwoman. The only thing that brought an impoverished Eunice respectability was her white skin. But then she heard of her husband's death, and in 1869, mystifying some of her relatives, Connolly put that respectability at risk, too, marrying a well-to-do black sea captain from Grand Cayman Island and moving there with him. Hodes, a historian at NYU (White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South), relies on a rich cache of Connolly's letters, which are housed at Duke University. Unfortunately, the letters don't reveal how Connolly met her second husband or explain in depth why she decided to marry him. Hodes's prose, though sometimes a bit affected ('In place of fiction, I offer the craft of history, assisted by the art of speculation'), is lucid and her account is engaging, though for readers steeped in the subject not pathbreaking; what Hodes has to tell us about the 19th century — that race was socially constructed and complicated, for example — is nothing new. 47 b&w illus., 2 maps. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"What a terrific book! I could hardly put it down... A story of triumph over adversity."--James McPherson. Award-winning historian Hodes presents the true, extraordinary story of Eunice Connolly, a woman whose misfortune and defiance make up the grand themes of American history--opportunity and racism, war and freedom.

Martha Hodes, professor of history at New York University, won the Allan Nevins Prize for White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South. She lives in New York City and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.