After the Glory Author:Helen Topping Miller The four Markland brothers of East Tennessee- arrogant, headstrong, and cavalier- came home from the War to face the bitter knowledge of defeat. For the three brothers who had fought and bled for the Confederacy, the defeat was of their cause and their way of life. But for William, the renegade who had enlisted in the Union Army, defeat had a su... more »btler meaning. Garrisoned in his own home town, he had to face the task of trying to help a family suddenly poverty-stricken and lost in a world they never made- a world of carpetbaggers. Yet his own family would not recognize him, nor mention his name except in hate.
A conflict of loyalty underlies this story of how each of these people faces the challenge of building a new life on the ashes of the old and reaffirming the ties of family pride and family loyalty.
William, the victor, hated by his own family, wanted peace among them, and peace among all the squabbling, self-seeking partisans of postwar Tennessee. Only Jack's wife, Sue, whom the war years had transformed from a flirtatious beauty into a core of strength, could see the truth in William's advice. Only she wanted to accept the harsh, postwar world and to rebuild on the ashes of the South's defeat, to preach the doctrines of reconciliation and the final laying down of arms. But they found few listeners.
Not until, at last, the Marklands began to look into themselves could they find their way to a better future.
In After the Glory, a stirring tale of the defeat and rebirth of a family, Helen Topping Miller has combined her well-proved gift for romantic storytelling with a wealth of domestic detail that makes a vanished era live again for readers.« less