What does it take to write a groundbreaking novel on the relationships of Southern women, black and white, in the turbulent era between the Civil War and World War II? A time when men marched off to war and their deeds were recorded in history books, while unsung southern heroines went about their lives without the slightest idea they were affecting social and political change?

For Jeri Fitzgerald Board of Tryon, NC and author of The Bed She Was Born In, it started with growing up in a small, close-knit town in Johnston County on the coastal plain of North Carolina—a land of endless fields of cotton and tobacco interrupted by stands of swaying pines and muddy, slow-moving rivers. There Jeri’s introduction to Civil War history and the role of women started early.

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Sometimes I’ll say here, “This is a book you could live in.” It means even after you know how the story turns out, you’ll want to read it again and again.

What makes “a book you could live in?” First—Characters: They are so well-defined, you could gossip about them, tell them what to do, or avoid, however wrongheadedly they behave. The five vital women who anchor The Bed She Was Born In—Adaire, Ludie, Millie, Anna, Maddie—compel us to root for them to be honest or devious; for instance, when Adaire angrily refuses to help at a Yankee field hospital, we strain for her learn compassion even for her enemies.

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The way Jeri Fitzgerald Board tells it, one prospective publisher looked over her manuscript and remarked, “You know what’s wrong here? There’s too much stuff in here about women.”

Guilty as charged, Your Honor. The Bed She Was Born In follows four generations of Southern women – from a fictional crossroads not far from the Bentonville battlefield, near where Board grew up – through tribulations from the Civil War through the Great Depression and up to the eve of World War II.

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