Cut from Strong Cloth
Nineteen-year-old Ellen Canavan and her first-generation Irish-American family arrived in Philadelphia, trying to make a successful business in the textile industry. She is depicted as a strong, opinionated woman who feels women should have equal rights, and she detests slavery. She hopes to one day own her own textile selling business and joins with her brother to establish herself in the male business world. Ellen’s work with businessman James Nolin to manufacture cloth for the Union Army takes them on a cotton buying trip to Savannah, not a safe place to be as the Civil War begins. James becomes important to her, not only as a mentor, but she also realizes, when he does not return from the South, that she is in love with him. She then travels alone, during wartime, to find him.
I had hoped that I would love this book as I am knowledgeable about Civil War history and the clothing and etiquette of the period. It failed. The author did not have a good sense of the time period, mannerisms, language, or of fashion. In her efforts to show Ellen to be an independent young woman, she had her leave the home without a corset or petticoats, losing my respect for her as a historical novelist. The inaccuracies continued. When Ellen’s love interest was taken prisoner and drugged by a backwoods woman and her children, I found it difficult to take this novel seriously. Not a historical book.
