2004 News Archive

Voices Over Water a tale of Civil War intrigue, clashing cultures

When the Freedmen's Bureau came to the South Carolina Low Country after the Civil War, five white women were already on the barrier islands living and working among the ex-slaves.

No one knows their names or how they got to the islands.

In this debut novel based on true events, author Ann Herlong-Bodman offers the story of one such woman-Sarah Sarah Edings, a bold and remarkable planter's daughter who returns to Edisto Island after Union soldiers invade Port Royal.

With the war raging all around her, Edings fronts as a teacher for freed slaves while bravely passing secret dispatches behind enemy lines to her embattled Confederate comrades. The danger is ever-present-resentful ex-slaves, renegade rebels and rampaging blue coats. But the biggest danger of all comes when she falls in love a handsome young Yankee officer.

The novel includes portraits of historical trail-blazers like Lucy Holcomb Pickens, the "Queen of the Confederacy" and wife of South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens-the only woman to have her likeness on Confederate money.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Voices Over Water will touch the hearts of readers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

About Ann Herlong-Bodman
Ann Herlong-Bodman is a retired teacher and professor. She spent teaching stints at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and Lander University. She is also author of In the Wake of Saints and Sinners, a non-fiction travel book about the southern
coast of Turkey. Mrs. Bodman now lives on a barrier island near Charleston, South Carolina, where she is working on her next novel.

For more information, please contact Carrie McCullough, associate publisher, at carriemccullough@bellsouth.net or (706) 738-0354.