The Western North Carolina Civil War Round Table will meet at 7 pm Monday, Oct. 8,  in Room #20 on the second floor of the Justice Center, in Sylva. Come meet the author, Suzy Barile, and join round table friends at Bogart's in Sylva for dinner
at 5 p.m.  A social hour will follow at 6:30 p.m. at the Justice Center.  The presentation will be at 7 pm.
Barile, author of "Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General," will discuss her recent non-fiction book.  Ella Swain, Barile's great-great- grandmother, was the daughter of David Swain, president of the University of North Carolina and former Governor of N.C.  General Smith Atkins, of Illinois, abhorred slavery and greatly admired Abraham Lincoln.  Spirited Ella Swain had been raised in a slave-owning family and had spent the war gathering supplies to send to Confederate soldiers.

The day General Atkins stopped at President Swain's home, the war was over and President Lincoln was dead.  He had come to inform Swain that Chapel Hill was under Union occupation. Thus began a most unlikely romance that endured through differences and scandal.

The story is told with never before published excerpts from Ella's own diaries and letters.  Learn how these two young people from the Reconstruction era melded their different backgrounds into a most unusual life together.

Barile is a freelance writer and teaches journalism, composition and literature at Wake Tech Community College,in Raleigh.  Prior to that she spent 25 years working on newspapers as a reporter, editor and in communications.  She is a graduate of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at UNC Chapel Hill and earned a MS from North Carolina State University.  She and her husband live in Harmony.   "Undaunted Heart" won the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Award.
Call Chris Behre at 293-9314 or Chuck Beemer at 456-4212.