So Red the Rose

So Red the Rose relates the Civil War-era sagas of two prominent fictive Mississippi families, both of which are “large, patriarchal, and structured to preserve the fiction of social and racial supremacy.” Historical figures—Grant, Sherman, and the family’s neighbor, Jefferson Davis—appear in the narrative as the families debate secession, sons fight and die for the Confederate cause, daughters fall in and out of love, husbands turn to drink, and their wives support them (while gaining a sense of superiority)