"Your Affectionate Daughter, Isabella" is a very entertaining book - the kind of book I always slow down on reading, towards the end, because I don't want it to be over - but also a fascinating look into the world of the Antebellum South. Most of us have a picture of plantation owners as Clark Gables and Scarlett O'Haras in silks and brocades; the Torrances' plantation in North Carolina is a reasonably prosperous but serious working plantation, whose owners do care about their slaves - apparently the only information we now have about them comes from annual summaries James Torrance writes up - and who would probably free their slaves, except that "Then, where would we get workers for the Plantation?" A good summary of much of the prewar Southern situation.
The basis of the book is an extensive collection of letters written by Isabella and various other family members, all interwoven with just enough history and background so that it all makes an absorbing story. The Torrance plantation - in western North Carolina - prospers and exemplifies the good life, sure enough; various sons and daughters, including Isabella, go off elsewhere to find their fortunes, mostly with indifferent success, and often as not drift back to the old homestead. This is life as it was lived by a group of attractive but fairly ordinary people, in a world in which the vagaries of the weather, the agonizingly high rate of infant and adult mortality and the price of cotton, year by year, were far more important than far-off Abolitionists and Fire-eaters.
As a part-time Civil-War buff, I found this a fascinating insight into the people on the Other Side, who are of course now Us. It's part of the magic of Your Affectionate Daughter that you really want to know how they all came out - the book tells us all the letters know, but I found myself wanting more. And, if making you really care about the characters isn't a measure of a book's narrative power, what is?

p.s. Well, yes, I am a brother-in-law of the Author. But it's still a really good book.

"Your Affectionate Daughter, Isabella" is particularly noteworthy as Ms. Williams has avoided the trap that most authors who base their work on a collection of letters fall into... her narrative carries the story, using the letters only to support the text.. rather than the reverse.

She accomplishes this with an impressive working knowledge of the post 1800 south and plantation lifestyles, presented to us with both a flair for writing and a skillful turn of phrase that, when combined, turn this work into a charming story that will find favor with anyone who enjoys well written and educational history. I hope we'll see more of Ms. William's work.

What a wonderful book! A good read, a touching story, and accurate history. Isabella Torrance was a strong woman who suffered much, and accomplished much, growing up in North Carolina and Mississippi in the early part of the 19th Century.

This story is set in the early 1800s in the American South and is totally based on existing letters from the period. The Torrance family of North Carolina must have kept every piece of paper they ever got. It follows Isabella from the age of 7 when she was sent off to boarding school (Salem College, North Carolina), to coming home at the age of nine to a new mother and growing up on a large farm which was turning into a plantation. She married early and pioneered with her husband and baby in Mississippi - the edge of the wilderness at that time. After much suffering on the frontier, and the death of her husband, she returned to North Carolina to more adventures and a full life.

The story is told through family letters, using the actual letters and other family records, plus enough imagined dialog to keep the story moving along. Ms. Williams seems to have done her research well and all of the details, from the largest to the most minute, ring true. I really enjoyed reading the book as a story, plus the added value of finding out what life was really like in the American South and on the frontier in the period just before the Civil War.

The book gives history and insight on his life and follows his working history from Macon to Florida to Atlanta. His attention to detail is pointed out in many chapters and the photography along with the orginal drawings are a good touch. If your looking for some ideas or maybe a facade to copy this would be a excellent book. Most of his houses are timeless designs and the interior views and elevation views are stunning.