A Family Secret: A Novel

by Eliza Frances Andrews, S. Kittrell Rushing (Editor)

Drawing on her own experiences as a southern aristocrat during wartime, A Family Secret is writer and social critic Eliza Frances Andrews’s fictionalized retelling of the end of her long-cherished way of life. A best seller in both the North and South upon its original publication in 1876, the novel focuses on the plight of upper-class southern women unprepared for the challenges of post–Civil War life, women Andrews described in her own diary as girls “educated only for show.”At its core a love story, A Family Secret revolves around the adventures of Virginia-born Audley Malvern, descendent of one of the “first families” of the Old Dominion, and Ruth Harfleur, long-lost heir to a plantation fortune. Though Andrews pointedly claimed that the novel was not an attempt to “doctor public morals,” her characters both lament the passing of a treasured way of life and decry the brutality of war that smothered the traits of decency and kindness.The novel draws significantly on Andrews’s wartime memories. The scene of a visit to the prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville was based on stories she had heard from visiting soldiers. The wartime railroad train and the interaction between Confederate officers and the backwoods farmer-soldiers—on whose shoulders the burden of war squarely rested—have their origins in observations recorded in Andrews’s journals. A valuable portrait of the attitudes of class and racial division in the Civil War South, A Family Secret depicts the myths on which antebellum social structure rested and hints at the changes to come in the region’s racial and gender roles and expectations.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1876

About the author

A popular Southern writer of the Gilded Age. Her works were published in popular magazines and papers, including the New York World and Godey's Lady's Book.[1] Her longer works included The War-Time Journal of a Georgian Girl (1908) and two botany textbooks.[2]

Eliza Frances Andrews gained fame in three fields: authorship, education, and science. Her passion was writing and she had success both as an essayist and a novelist.[3] Financial troubles forced her to take a teaching career after the deaths of her parents, though she continued to be published. In her retirement she combined two of her interests by writing two textbooks on botany entitled Botany All the Year Round and Practical Botany,[3] the latter of which became popular in Europe and was translated for schools in France.[4] Andrews's published works, notably her Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl along with her novels and numerous articles, give a glimpse into bitterness, dissatisfaction, and confusion in the post-Civil War South.