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Dear America
When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Diary of Emma Simpson
Acclaimed author Barry Denenberg's WHEN WILL THIS CRUEL WAR BE OVER? is now back in print with a gorgeous new package!
The peaceful, traditional Southern life that Emma Simpson and her family know is shattered when the Civil War reaches their soil. Soon, Emma's father and brother are called to battle, but her family is confident the South will quickly win the War between the States.
As the months drag on, though, the harsh realities of war set in. Death and hardship are all around Emma, and food, medicine, firewood, and ink for her to write in her diary become increasingly scarce as troops from the North march deeper into the South. Finally, even her home is commandeered by the Yankees.
Still, with a brave spirit and the knowledge of what is most important, Emma never loses hope that the war will end.
The peaceful, traditional Southern life that Emma Simpson and her family know is shattered when the Civil War reaches their soil. Soon, Emma's father and brother are called to battle, but her family is confident the South will quickly win the War between the States.
As the months drag on, though, the harsh realities of war set in. Death and hardship are all around Emma, and food, medicine, firewood, and ink for her to write in her diary become increasingly scarce as troops from the North march deeper into the South. Finally, even her home is commandeered by the Yankees.
Still, with a brave spirit and the knowledge of what is most important, Emma never loses hope that the war will end.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
73 people are currently reading
2463 people want to read
About the author
Barry Denenberg
47 books82 followersBarry Denenberg is the critically acclaimed author of non-fiction and historical fiction. His historical fiction includes titles in the Dear America, My Name is America, and Royal Diaries series, many of which have been named NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People. His nonfiction books have covered a wide array of topics, from Anne Frank to Elvis Presley. After the publication of An American Hero: The True Story of Charles Lindburgh, Denenberg was interviewed for various documentaries including ABC’s “The Century.”
Denenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York and lived in Long Island, Binghamton, New York, and Palisades Park, New Jersey. “I was a serious reader from an early age and when I attended Boston University in 1968, majoring in history, I worked in a bookstore at night,” he says. “After college I was a book buyer for some fine, independent bookstores, some of the nation’s largest retail book chains and a marketing executive in publishing.
“At the age of forty I came to the startling realization that the glamorous world of power lunches, power politics, and power trips was not for me. I immediately went to work on the Great American Novel (since destroyed) and was rescued when my future wife, Jean Feiwel (then and now publisher of Scholastic Inc.) made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Scholastic had received a biography of John F. Kennedy that they deemed unacceptable: would I like to try and write one?
“The rest is history in more ways than one. I went on to write biographies of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, J. Edgar Hoover, Nelson Mandela, Elvis Presley and Voices From Vietnam, an oral history of the war.
“Writing some of the first books in the Dear America series was a turning point in my career. Its popularity and the resulting readers’ letters made a great impression on me. This in turn inspired my writing and fueled my research. With my bookstore background and the help of numerous knowledgeable booksellers I am able to assemble an extensive bibliography on each topic I write.
“I think there’s an art to both writing and research. I’m a good writer but a better researcher.”
Something that has added greatly to Denenberg’s perspective on writing for young readers is his volunteer work as Director of Creative Writing and Library Services at the Waterside School in Stamford, Connecticut. Waterside, established in 2001, is an independent school dedicated to educating gifted children of the communities’ low-income families.
Aside from writing and teaching Denenberg’s interests include listening to music, reading (books not related to his research), swimming, practicing yoga and spending time with his family.
Barry Denenberg lives in Bedford, New York with his wife and daughter.
Denenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York and lived in Long Island, Binghamton, New York, and Palisades Park, New Jersey. “I was a serious reader from an early age and when I attended Boston University in 1968, majoring in history, I worked in a bookstore at night,” he says. “After college I was a book buyer for some fine, independent bookstores, some of the nation’s largest retail book chains and a marketing executive in publishing.
“At the age of forty I came to the startling realization that the glamorous world of power lunches, power politics, and power trips was not for me. I immediately went to work on the Great American Novel (since destroyed) and was rescued when my future wife, Jean Feiwel (then and now publisher of Scholastic Inc.) made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Scholastic had received a biography of John F. Kennedy that they deemed unacceptable: would I like to try and write one?
“The rest is history in more ways than one. I went on to write biographies of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, J. Edgar Hoover, Nelson Mandela, Elvis Presley and Voices From Vietnam, an oral history of the war.
“Writing some of the first books in the Dear America series was a turning point in my career. Its popularity and the resulting readers’ letters made a great impression on me. This in turn inspired my writing and fueled my research. With my bookstore background and the help of numerous knowledgeable booksellers I am able to assemble an extensive bibliography on each topic I write.
“I think there’s an art to both writing and research. I’m a good writer but a better researcher.”
Something that has added greatly to Denenberg’s perspective on writing for young readers is his volunteer work as Director of Creative Writing and Library Services at the Waterside School in Stamford, Connecticut. Waterside, established in 2001, is an independent school dedicated to educating gifted children of the communities’ low-income families.
Aside from writing and teaching Denenberg’s interests include listening to music, reading (books not related to his research), swimming, practicing yoga and spending time with his family.
Barry Denenberg lives in Bedford, New York with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 263 reviews
February 23, 2011
When Will This Cruel War Be Over (The Civil War) / 0-590-22862-5
Quite frankly, this book is terrible and fails on many levels. Historically, it is useless, because it subverts real and important history in favor of overt racism. A single glaring example: on page 29 of the diary, the narrator describes the "weekly classes" that her mother gives to their slave children or, as she terms, "her little scholars". In a book set in 1864, in Virginia, in the midst of the Civil War, the plantation family is giving weekly lessons to their slave children to read and write! This is terrible history - teaching reading and writing to a slave was a dire offense in the South, thanks to the Slave Codes and Anti-Literacy laws, most of which originated in Virginia a century before this book is set! Teaching a single slave to be your personal bookkeeper was a serious offense; holding public lessons for all your slave children would result in the entire family being burnt out of town for being abolitionists or worse! Historically, any master intent on giving slaves lessons would have done so in the direst secrecy, in the dead of night, and only to adults (little children might let slip the secret). Such a master would sleep with a loaded gun by the bed, conscious that the slightest slip of tongue could result in a riot, in hangings, in the death and destruction of everything they owned.
Why does the author thumb his nose at history and insert this ludicrous detail, despite the incredible breach of accuracy? Two reasons, really. First, he can continue to paint the Southern plantation owners as paternalistic participants in the "fair and equitable" system of slavery. It's horrifying to see that the "slavery was good for black people because their masters took care of them" argument is still alive and well here. Second, our author can flaunt his racism by underscoring his idea that slaves were simple minded idiots who actually *needed* the structures of slavery in order to survive - the narrator notes with matronly frustration that the slave children simply do not *want* to learn to read and write and are stupid little barbaric animals, uninterested in the larger world around them.
Lest you think I'm being uncharitable, halfway through the book I started turning down the page corner every time a slave did something stupid, dim-witted, animalistic, or sub-human. I had to stop this practice, however, because I realized I was turning down every single page. It's not just that the narrator is "realistically racist", the slave actions that the author imagines for his fictional Emma to record are caricatures of people - his slaves are stupid, dim animals who are too foolish to appreciate freedom, literacy, or the simple privilege of having a family. By contrast, the fictional plantation owners are sweet and gentle masters who deserve lionization - although we just have to believe this when it is presented as fact, for we are given no examples of praiseworthy actions to back this up. He lavishes praise on them for not beating the slaves too often unless they are particularly stubborn or stupid, and for not breaking up families unless "necessary".
As much as the author cannot capture a realistic black slave in his writing, he cannot capture a realistic young woman. "Emma" is boring and tiresome. She simply does not do anything in this novel except write letters to a boy she has met only once, expound on the virtues of marriage to her diary, and sit by her ailing mother. We're well into the Civil War, with full-fledged shortages and starvation - you'd think we might see Emma in the fields, desperately trying to eke out a carrot or two from the barren fields, or we might see her at the market, haggling for a bit of bacon to feed to her ill mother, but these interesting scenes of shortages and famine don't seem to occur to the author. There is marriage to write about!
Emma's fictional "Cousin Rachel" (Emma is too stupid to realize that when you only know one Rachel, you don't have to keep writing "Cousin Rachel" every time) takes up at least a third of the book with her arguments against marriage, and Emma is obsessed with pointing out that Rachel is wrong. At first, this seems potentially intriguing - Has Rachel been jilted? Wronged? Has a secret and youthful lover died in an earlier battle? Has her father shamelessly abandoned her mother? - It isn't until the epilogue that it is revealed that, no, Rachel was just insane. That's why she professed relatively sensible concerns about 19th century marriage: insanity. I honestly cannot tell if the author is a misogynist or just boring and unimaginative.
I would not recommend this novel to anyone. Apart from the pro-slavery racism and paternalistic attitudes, apart from the anti-feminism and slavishly romantic main character, apart from the painful boredom of a young woman who never does anything with her life except mope around waiting for a boy she met once to ride up and rescue her, the entire affair was so boring from beginning to end that even "Emma" seems to realize how deathly dull her life is - many pages of her diary have a mere single sentence as an entry. In closing, I will leave you with these riveting examples of the evocative writing in this diary, with each entry produced in its entirety:
Wednesday, January 13, 1864 - I never realized how happy I was until this war besieged our land.
Tuesday, February 16, 1864 - There are many reports of smallpox in the area.
Tuesday, February 23, 1864 - Mother remained in bed all day.
Wednesday, March 23, 1864 - Mother is still feeling poorly.
Monday, April 18, 1864 - Mother died today.
Tuesday, May 10, 1864 - We received word of the death of Lieutenant Walker.
Tuesday, May 24, 1864 - Cousin Rachel and I talked in my room again this evening.
Saturday, July 9, 1864 - My watch is broken.
Sunday, July 24, 1864 - The weather is quite warm today.
Saturday, December 3, 1864 - We wait in breathless anticipation for news.
Sunday, December 11, 1864 - How long O Lord, how long?
Thursday, December 22, 1864 - I am growing thin and feeling weak. I can no longer even weep.
~ Ana Mardoll
Quite frankly, this book is terrible and fails on many levels. Historically, it is useless, because it subverts real and important history in favor of overt racism. A single glaring example: on page 29 of the diary, the narrator describes the "weekly classes" that her mother gives to their slave children or, as she terms, "her little scholars". In a book set in 1864, in Virginia, in the midst of the Civil War, the plantation family is giving weekly lessons to their slave children to read and write! This is terrible history - teaching reading and writing to a slave was a dire offense in the South, thanks to the Slave Codes and Anti-Literacy laws, most of which originated in Virginia a century before this book is set! Teaching a single slave to be your personal bookkeeper was a serious offense; holding public lessons for all your slave children would result in the entire family being burnt out of town for being abolitionists or worse! Historically, any master intent on giving slaves lessons would have done so in the direst secrecy, in the dead of night, and only to adults (little children might let slip the secret). Such a master would sleep with a loaded gun by the bed, conscious that the slightest slip of tongue could result in a riot, in hangings, in the death and destruction of everything they owned.
Why does the author thumb his nose at history and insert this ludicrous detail, despite the incredible breach of accuracy? Two reasons, really. First, he can continue to paint the Southern plantation owners as paternalistic participants in the "fair and equitable" system of slavery. It's horrifying to see that the "slavery was good for black people because their masters took care of them" argument is still alive and well here. Second, our author can flaunt his racism by underscoring his idea that slaves were simple minded idiots who actually *needed* the structures of slavery in order to survive - the narrator notes with matronly frustration that the slave children simply do not *want* to learn to read and write and are stupid little barbaric animals, uninterested in the larger world around them.
Lest you think I'm being uncharitable, halfway through the book I started turning down the page corner every time a slave did something stupid, dim-witted, animalistic, or sub-human. I had to stop this practice, however, because I realized I was turning down every single page. It's not just that the narrator is "realistically racist", the slave actions that the author imagines for his fictional Emma to record are caricatures of people - his slaves are stupid, dim animals who are too foolish to appreciate freedom, literacy, or the simple privilege of having a family. By contrast, the fictional plantation owners are sweet and gentle masters who deserve lionization - although we just have to believe this when it is presented as fact, for we are given no examples of praiseworthy actions to back this up. He lavishes praise on them for not beating the slaves too often unless they are particularly stubborn or stupid, and for not breaking up families unless "necessary".
As much as the author cannot capture a realistic black slave in his writing, he cannot capture a realistic young woman. "Emma" is boring and tiresome. She simply does not do anything in this novel except write letters to a boy she has met only once, expound on the virtues of marriage to her diary, and sit by her ailing mother. We're well into the Civil War, with full-fledged shortages and starvation - you'd think we might see Emma in the fields, desperately trying to eke out a carrot or two from the barren fields, or we might see her at the market, haggling for a bit of bacon to feed to her ill mother, but these interesting scenes of shortages and famine don't seem to occur to the author. There is marriage to write about!
Emma's fictional "Cousin Rachel" (Emma is too stupid to realize that when you only know one Rachel, you don't have to keep writing "Cousin Rachel" every time) takes up at least a third of the book with her arguments against marriage, and Emma is obsessed with pointing out that Rachel is wrong. At first, this seems potentially intriguing - Has Rachel been jilted? Wronged? Has a secret and youthful lover died in an earlier battle? Has her father shamelessly abandoned her mother? - It isn't until the epilogue that it is revealed that, no, Rachel was just insane. That's why she professed relatively sensible concerns about 19th century marriage: insanity. I honestly cannot tell if the author is a misogynist or just boring and unimaginative.
I would not recommend this novel to anyone. Apart from the pro-slavery racism and paternalistic attitudes, apart from the anti-feminism and slavishly romantic main character, apart from the painful boredom of a young woman who never does anything with her life except mope around waiting for a boy she met once to ride up and rescue her, the entire affair was so boring from beginning to end that even "Emma" seems to realize how deathly dull her life is - many pages of her diary have a mere single sentence as an entry. In closing, I will leave you with these riveting examples of the evocative writing in this diary, with each entry produced in its entirety:
Wednesday, January 13, 1864 - I never realized how happy I was until this war besieged our land.
Tuesday, February 16, 1864 - There are many reports of smallpox in the area.
Tuesday, February 23, 1864 - Mother remained in bed all day.
Wednesday, March 23, 1864 - Mother is still feeling poorly.
Monday, April 18, 1864 - Mother died today.
Tuesday, May 10, 1864 - We received word of the death of Lieutenant Walker.
Tuesday, May 24, 1864 - Cousin Rachel and I talked in my room again this evening.
Saturday, July 9, 1864 - My watch is broken.
Sunday, July 24, 1864 - The weather is quite warm today.
Saturday, December 3, 1864 - We wait in breathless anticipation for news.
Sunday, December 11, 1864 - How long O Lord, how long?
Thursday, December 22, 1864 - I am growing thin and feeling weak. I can no longer even weep.
~ Ana Mardoll
August 13, 2020
Now with regard to my rather negative general reaction to Barry Denenberg's When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, while I am NOT at all an expert on the US Civil War, I do in fact know that it was definitely both highly illegal and also incredibly dangerous for plantation owners to in any manner attempt to educate their slaves. So yes, the scenes in When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson where Emma Simpson's mother is giving weekly lessons to her so-called little scholars, to the family's slaves, well, this is simply not historically accurate and at best rather woefully unrealistic (and is therefore and in my humble opinion also quite a major falsehood that really should not be fed to children, for it gives or at least it might well give a mistaken and false portrait of America's past).
And indeed, one does have to wonder why author Barry Denenberg seemingly wants in When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson to portray antebellum slavery as often quite annoyingly white-washed (bit of a pun intended here), with plantation owners depicted (through the narrative voice of Emma Simpson) as mostly rather benign and the slaves themselves generally as simplistic at best and also pretty much inherently grateful to their "masters" and owners. Is it because Denenberg in fact believes that slavery was actually not all that bad and perhaps even something laudable? For yes, with Emma's fictional diary entries (and of course according to my own worldview) this type of problematic at best way of consideration and attitude, it does definitely colour through and stain When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson and also turns this instalment of the Dear America series of fictional diaries into quite the pro-confederacy and pro-slavery as an institution piece of writing (and thus, not really a book to consider for children except perhaps as a negative example).
And indeed, one does have to wonder why author Barry Denenberg seemingly wants in When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson to portray antebellum slavery as often quite annoyingly white-washed (bit of a pun intended here), with plantation owners depicted (through the narrative voice of Emma Simpson) as mostly rather benign and the slaves themselves generally as simplistic at best and also pretty much inherently grateful to their "masters" and owners. Is it because Denenberg in fact believes that slavery was actually not all that bad and perhaps even something laudable? For yes, with Emma's fictional diary entries (and of course according to my own worldview) this type of problematic at best way of consideration and attitude, it does definitely colour through and stain When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson and also turns this instalment of the Dear America series of fictional diaries into quite the pro-confederacy and pro-slavery as an institution piece of writing (and thus, not really a book to consider for children except perhaps as a negative example).
October 5, 2022
This is a very difficult book to rate.
A lot of the reviews are about the prevalent racism in this book, and it's there to be sure. One question I see a lot of the adult readers struggling with is how much of this we are supposed to see being the teenage girl narrator's POV and how much of it is the author's ignorance. If adults are this uncertain, that seems a bit troubling given that this is a book written for kids (or um 32-year-old childless crones). I would absolutely NOT recommend this book be given to a child unless it was properly contextualized. And this is one Dear America book where the back matter is not sufficient. There is a great opportunity to pair this one with Clotee's own diary because that book dispels many of Emma's illusions.
So yeah. Emma is incredibly naive about the inner lives of her family's "servants" (no, Emma, your family BOUGHT them). Like a lot of kids, she pretty much parrots back her father's racist, paternalistic views. She's not smart or mature enough to really delve deeper. It seems incredibly unlikely that her mother would take the "risk" of educating their slaves unless she was a low-key abolitionist, but there's no evidence of this in the book. Every time Emma mentions how her father is a "good master" and how "loyal" their slaves are, I rolled my eyes. Here is exactly where secondary readings would be essential for kids. While again, I thought that originally this was just Emma's POV, n the epilogue, the author writes that Iris, the slave who fits a certain racist stereotype and is a mother figure to Emma, not only stays on at the ruined family home but also goes North when adult Emma leaves. It adds nothing to the rest of the book, really, except serving to confuse young readers and actually bolster the myth that there were "happy slaves." (And yes, I can acknowledge that it may have been easier for Iris to move North with someone she knew and a guaranteed job. And I can also hold space for the fact that Iris might have truly cared about Emma).
Okay, with that issue out of the way, there are some other weird things about this book--namely the problem with Cousin Rachel. Am I totally wrong for thinking it's implied that she was seduced, jilted, and then found out she was pregnant? That baby "sister" was totally her own kid, right? At any rate, something happened to her that makes her hate men and scoff at marriage, and her exchanges with Emma are actually pretty amusing. I'd like to see Rachel's diary for sure. Unfortunately, she recedes into the background in the second half of the book, and the epilogue makes it seem like she was a textbook "hysterical" woman (ie: ungovernable and emotional, not crazy).
But what's good about this book is it was a page-turner. I wanted to keep reading and finding out what would happen next. Despite being on the wrong side of history, how can you not feel a pang when the book opens with Emma's brother's death, and slowly, everyone in town loses at least one person to the war. Their food supplies dwindle. Union soldiers ransack their homes, which would have been terrifying for a bevy of reasons. Communications with loved ones at war are few and far between; many only find out a loved one is killed by reading it in the paper. This horror is captured well, and I don't think it's wrong to sympathize with Emma for some of the things that happen to her and her family.
Dead parent count: 1 in the text, 1 in the epilogue. Bonus: 1 brother, 1 cousin, so many acquaintances
A lot of the reviews are about the prevalent racism in this book, and it's there to be sure. One question I see a lot of the adult readers struggling with is how much of this we are supposed to see being the teenage girl narrator's POV and how much of it is the author's ignorance. If adults are this uncertain, that seems a bit troubling given that this is a book written for kids (or um 32-year-old childless crones). I would absolutely NOT recommend this book be given to a child unless it was properly contextualized. And this is one Dear America book where the back matter is not sufficient. There is a great opportunity to pair this one with Clotee's own diary because that book dispels many of Emma's illusions.
So yeah. Emma is incredibly naive about the inner lives of her family's "servants" (no, Emma, your family BOUGHT them). Like a lot of kids, she pretty much parrots back her father's racist, paternalistic views. She's not smart or mature enough to really delve deeper. It seems incredibly unlikely that her mother would take the "risk" of educating their slaves unless she was a low-key abolitionist, but there's no evidence of this in the book. Every time Emma mentions how her father is a "good master" and how "loyal" their slaves are, I rolled my eyes. Here is exactly where secondary readings would be essential for kids. While again, I thought that originally this was just Emma's POV, n the epilogue, the author writes that Iris, the slave who fits a certain racist stereotype and is a mother figure to Emma, not only stays on at the ruined family home but also goes North when adult Emma leaves. It adds nothing to the rest of the book, really, except serving to confuse young readers and actually bolster the myth that there were "happy slaves." (And yes, I can acknowledge that it may have been easier for Iris to move North with someone she knew and a guaranteed job. And I can also hold space for the fact that Iris might have truly cared about Emma).
Okay, with that issue out of the way, there are some other weird things about this book--namely the problem with Cousin Rachel. Am I totally wrong for thinking it's implied that she was seduced, jilted, and then found out she was pregnant? That baby "sister" was totally her own kid, right? At any rate, something happened to her that makes her hate men and scoff at marriage, and her exchanges with Emma are actually pretty amusing. I'd like to see Rachel's diary for sure. Unfortunately, she recedes into the background in the second half of the book, and the epilogue makes it seem like she was a textbook "hysterical" woman (ie: ungovernable and emotional, not crazy).
But what's good about this book is it was a page-turner. I wanted to keep reading and finding out what would happen next. Despite being on the wrong side of history, how can you not feel a pang when the book opens with Emma's brother's death, and slowly, everyone in town loses at least one person to the war. Their food supplies dwindle. Union soldiers ransack their homes, which would have been terrifying for a bevy of reasons. Communications with loved ones at war are few and far between; many only find out a loved one is killed by reading it in the paper. This horror is captured well, and I don't think it's wrong to sympathize with Emma for some of the things that happen to her and her family.
Dead parent count: 1 in the text, 1 in the epilogue. Bonus: 1 brother, 1 cousin, so many acquaintances
May 3, 2021
Yikes. This was....not great. Like. If this would have been the first Dear America story I read when I was a kid, I never would have picked up another book from the series.
My problem isn't that Emma's family was on the South side of the war. I can appreciate that historical perspective despite knowing how wrong it was. What I can't appreciate is this book making it look like slaves were having a good time working for these white families. That's not historically accurate, and I think it's shameful that kids might read this and think it to be true.
Also, I hated the formatting of this. It was basically broken down into chapters with large headings, and it really made the experience of reading a journal disjointed. I read a handful of these books as a kid, and I'm endeavoring to read them all as an adult. This is the first one I've ever read formatted this way and it was really awful, and I hope there aren't any more written like this one was.
My problem isn't that Emma's family was on the South side of the war. I can appreciate that historical perspective despite knowing how wrong it was. What I can't appreciate is this book making it look like slaves were having a good time working for these white families. That's not historically accurate, and I think it's shameful that kids might read this and think it to be true.
Also, I hated the formatting of this. It was basically broken down into chapters with large headings, and it really made the experience of reading a journal disjointed. I read a handful of these books as a kid, and I'm endeavoring to read them all as an adult. This is the first one I've ever read formatted this way and it was really awful, and I hope there aren't any more written like this one was.
August 12, 2015
The Good: The entire focus of the Dear America series is to give a real-life portrait of everyday life in days gone by, and this book does that fairly well. It's also great to see that Christian faith and a love for literature are portrayed in a positive light, the former of which is a bit surprising for a secular book. The historical information at the back was a nice touch.
The Bad: The formatting of this book was terrible; the constant headings were both annoying and a waste of space. Some of the diary entries were rather short; one merely said, "My watch is broken." It seems that the author and/or publisher were desperate to fill space, which makes this one kind of a rip-off.
Content Concerns:
• Sex: None. 5/5
• Nudity: None. 5/5
• Language: None. 5/5
• Violence: Injuries and fatalities from war are described and referenced. 4/5
• Drugs: None. 5/5
• Frightening/Intense Scenes: Emotional intensity as the protagonist loses multiple family members, one of whom was a young child. The main topic--the Civil War--is rather depressing as well. 3/5
Conclusion: Dear America may be a great historical fiction series for kids, but I did not enjoy this entry all that much. Though it had its good points, it would have been much better without all the filler; I want my pages to be filled with story, not wasted space! If you're new to this series, I would not suggest starting with this one.
Score: 2/5
The Bad: The formatting of this book was terrible; the constant headings were both annoying and a waste of space. Some of the diary entries were rather short; one merely said, "My watch is broken." It seems that the author and/or publisher were desperate to fill space, which makes this one kind of a rip-off.
Content Concerns:
• Sex: None. 5/5
• Nudity: None. 5/5
• Language: None. 5/5
• Violence: Injuries and fatalities from war are described and referenced. 4/5
• Drugs: None. 5/5
• Frightening/Intense Scenes: Emotional intensity as the protagonist loses multiple family members, one of whom was a young child. The main topic--the Civil War--is rather depressing as well. 3/5
Conclusion: Dear America may be a great historical fiction series for kids, but I did not enjoy this entry all that much. Though it had its good points, it would have been much better without all the filler; I want my pages to be filled with story, not wasted space! If you're new to this series, I would not suggest starting with this one.
Score: 2/5
January 10, 2019
What a dud.
This one left a sour taste in my mouth. Emma is one of those people who go around saying things like "but I've only seen happy slaves!" and "my daddy is a good slave owner because he doesn't beat them...unless he absolutely has to" and "slaves who runaway are acting ungrateful!" Plus, her diary entries read like what a robot thinks a teen girl would talk like in the 1800s. EVERYONE in this book talks in a strange, stilted way (and it's not just because of the old-timey talk). There is absolutely no character growth, which I was stupidly hoping for, especially since this girl was on the wrong side of history (what's next, "Dear America, the Diary of a Evie Braun, Tween Nazi"?). Emma is a really dull diarist and doesn't jump off the pages like the vibrant Caty and Clotee did in the previous entries I've read in this series.
This one left a sour taste in my mouth. Emma is one of those people who go around saying things like "but I've only seen happy slaves!" and "my daddy is a good slave owner because he doesn't beat them...unless he absolutely has to" and "slaves who runaway are acting ungrateful!" Plus, her diary entries read like what a robot thinks a teen girl would talk like in the 1800s. EVERYONE in this book talks in a strange, stilted way (and it's not just because of the old-timey talk). There is absolutely no character growth, which I was stupidly hoping for, especially since this girl was on the wrong side of history (what's next, "Dear America, the Diary of a Evie Braun, Tween Nazi"?). Emma is a really dull diarist and doesn't jump off the pages like the vibrant Caty and Clotee did in the previous entries I've read in this series.
December 13, 2015
As far as Dear America books go, this one was pretty heartbreaking. It does a descent job of showing the desolation of the South towards the end of the Civil War and the effects are lasting leading to a less than happy ending. This book does show that when it comes to war of any sort there is no "good" side or "bad" side with atrocities committed on both sides. Emma also shows that she is a product of her environment with her opinions on abolitionists. Overall, this one was pretty sobering and left me feeling a bit crushed, but it was historically accurate and offered a different perspective from the typical civil war story.
May 5, 2024
It was sadder than others but still good. ;)
November 5, 2022
Reading the Dear America series? Loved it as a kid? SKIP THIS ONE.
My least favorite Dear America book so far. Boring, historically inaccurate, grossly racist, and downright ridiculous. Here’s a petty irritation I had: the narrator’s brother’s name is Cole. She refers to him as “Brother Cole” throughout. Same for her cousin named Rachel. Guess what she calls her throughout the entire book? “Cousin Rachel”. THERE’S ONLY ONE COLE AND ONE RACHEL IN THE BOOK. The author (a man, I might add) crafted the narrator, Emma, into a vain, useless, racist, air-headed young girl, as if all girls do is fantasize about how pretty they are and the young men they long to see. Wow, as if I haven’t heard that storyline before.
God, this book was an absolute chore to read. I’m tempted to chuck it out the window. My Dear America series will be complete without it.
My least favorite Dear America book so far. Boring, historically inaccurate, grossly racist, and downright ridiculous. Here’s a petty irritation I had: the narrator’s brother’s name is Cole. She refers to him as “Brother Cole” throughout. Same for her cousin named Rachel. Guess what she calls her throughout the entire book? “Cousin Rachel”. THERE’S ONLY ONE COLE AND ONE RACHEL IN THE BOOK. The author (a man, I might add) crafted the narrator, Emma, into a vain, useless, racist, air-headed young girl, as if all girls do is fantasize about how pretty they are and the young men they long to see. Wow, as if I haven’t heard that storyline before.
God, this book was an absolute chore to read. I’m tempted to chuck it out the window. My Dear America series will be complete without it.
February 11, 2012
I absolutely love this series, as each book featured in it takes the reader back into a different time in our country's history. It's both an exciting and educational read. Though I'm out of the targeted age range for these books, I find them to be just as engaging as I would if I was reading these as a young reader. Barry Denenberg does a brilliant job at giving the reader an inside view of the life of a young girl living through the Civil War.
Emma Simpson has grown up in the south in a rather comfortable life style, but tragedy soon strikes her family and all but robs her life of all that she holds dear. This brave young teen holds true to her faith, firm in her love and finds solace in reading Jane Eyre. Emma's lost her brother to the war, her father is off fighting in the war, she's lost many she's known around her to war, disease, and poor heath, including her mother. Barry does an amazing job at showing the toll this war took on the lives of those who lived through it, fought during it and survived it. It doesn't matter if you were from the North or the South, this was a war that effected everyone, and Emma's story is one of bravery, heartbreak and courage.
I highly recommend picking this book up. It's a fabulous fictional read with a lot of historical references set during the Civil War. I think this is a book readers of all ages will enjoy.
Emma Simpson has grown up in the south in a rather comfortable life style, but tragedy soon strikes her family and all but robs her life of all that she holds dear. This brave young teen holds true to her faith, firm in her love and finds solace in reading Jane Eyre. Emma's lost her brother to the war, her father is off fighting in the war, she's lost many she's known around her to war, disease, and poor heath, including her mother. Barry does an amazing job at showing the toll this war took on the lives of those who lived through it, fought during it and survived it. It doesn't matter if you were from the North or the South, this was a war that effected everyone, and Emma's story is one of bravery, heartbreak and courage.
I highly recommend picking this book up. It's a fabulous fictional read with a lot of historical references set during the Civil War. I think this is a book readers of all ages will enjoy.
February 22, 2014
The book begins in 1863, the third year of the Civil War. Emma's only brother, Cole, comes home in a pine coffin. All students of this war know disease killed more than bullets, and this is one example. Cole was wounded, but died from pneumonia.
By 1863, all know this war is not an adventure. It is beginning to cause hardship in the South. All the husbands and sons are fighting and wives are running the plantations and dealing with the food shortages as best they can.
Emma's Journal records the diseases and deaths with great sorrow. She buries her niece, then her own mother. Sherman begins his torch path to the sea. Her home is taken over for Union Headquarters. This is one of those things that seem awful at first, but becomes a blessing in disquise. While neighboring homes are torched, hers is not.
The neatest part of the book is the Epilogue: Emma's great-great-granddaughter, Emma Clark Broughton lives in NYC, and is a journalist.
By 1863, all know this war is not an adventure. It is beginning to cause hardship in the South. All the husbands and sons are fighting and wives are running the plantations and dealing with the food shortages as best they can.
Emma's Journal records the diseases and deaths with great sorrow. She buries her niece, then her own mother. Sherman begins his torch path to the sea. Her home is taken over for Union Headquarters. This is one of those things that seem awful at first, but becomes a blessing in disquise. While neighboring homes are torched, hers is not.
The neatest part of the book is the Epilogue: Emma's great-great-granddaughter, Emma Clark Broughton lives in NYC, and is a journalist.
June 8, 2016
I thought it was very well written. I also thought that the author sugarcoated some of the details. The main character, Emma, lives in the south,and is on the Confederate side. The slaves remain faithful until the end. I don't understand how slaves could believe in slavery! The author did describe the cruel circumstances extremely well. I did not know how cruel the Yankee soldiers were. They are not the perfect heroes we think they were. They could be very cruel to southern civilians,most of whom were women(their husbands being off at war). They burned, stole, and destroyed for know reason. It is a good book about the war, especially because the author gives her sources and facts in the back of the book. Great for school research.
By Ella,12
By Ella,12
May 23, 2016
I read the entire book in one day. I happened to pick it up off a pile at the library that they were sending for recycling. I thought it was excellent. It was interesting getting the view of a young girl during the civil war. And how the woman had to be alone and constantly worried on how they were going to fend for themselves and had their home taken over by soldiers, struggling to get enough food, etc... And that this young girl met a man once and wrote to him the entire war and ended up marrying him. That is amazing.
November 24, 2016
This book is awesome! I would recommend it for any kind of historian it is great! It truly captures what life was like back home in the Southern states. It was surprising to see that most of the northerners would take anything and everything from the rich Southerns. They would take over their homes, steal their belongs, and take their life stock. This book was a real eye opener, I would definitely recommend this book!
October 8, 2017
It was interesting but a very sad read. Emma’s family lead a very hard life during these times this story did leave me feeling rather sad when I finished it.
July 9, 2020
a very sad story about what happened during the war to emma so much death in her family broke my heart and made me cry
February 11, 2020
This book was about a war who leaves her home. He tries to remember things before he left to war. He then starts feeling old due to how long this war has been on for, showing that he was a young soldier. He even sometimes has trouble trouble remembering things form the past that hes been through. I would recommend this book to middle aged kids because it talks about a persons life in war which can be hard for younger kids to understand.
March 13, 2021
While the writing was engaging, and i devoured this book in an evening, it did miss the mark on several points. Denenberg chose to write about the Civil War from the perspective of a rich, white, Southern girl, because he wanted to portray what life was like when war was "literally on your doorstep". In choosing the daughter of a plantation owner to tell the story of the Civil War, Denenberg took on the challenge of accurately portraying her life and opinions, but in a way that effectively challenges those opinions for the young, impressionable readers who are the audience of this series. He succeeds in the first, and fails utterly in the second.
Emma Simpson's life during the war is hard. She loses family members, her luxurious standard of living, and her sense of safety and security. As a perspective character, the reader empathizes with her struggles. However, assumedly in an attempt to make Emma lovable despite her status as an enslaver, Denenberg has her repeatedly emphasize that her family's enslaved workers are treated well, in contrast to her neighbor's, who are beaten regularly. She talks about providing medical care to an enslaved boy, and teaching enslaved children to read and write. She repeatedly points out the loyalty of her family's "servants", who stay with her and support her throughout the war. The "we treated our slaves well" trope is all too common in literature, and was certainly a common belief of Southern enslavers. Writing for children, however, carries a responsibility. Denenberg should have made an effort to portray Emma's worldview while simultaneously challenging it. He did not, either in the text itself or the historical endnotes. This was a missed opportunity that makes the book unsuitable for young readers to read independently (although it is still a useful text for guided reading if teachers/parents prompt readers to reflect on Emma's worldview and potentially pair this with another diary from a different perspective).
In addition to this major shortcoming, the book fails on a stylistic point. It ends abruptly without any resolution.
Emma Simpson's life during the war is hard. She loses family members, her luxurious standard of living, and her sense of safety and security. As a perspective character, the reader empathizes with her struggles. However, assumedly in an attempt to make Emma lovable despite her status as an enslaver, Denenberg has her repeatedly emphasize that her family's enslaved workers are treated well, in contrast to her neighbor's, who are beaten regularly. She talks about providing medical care to an enslaved boy, and teaching enslaved children to read and write. She repeatedly points out the loyalty of her family's "servants", who stay with her and support her throughout the war. The "we treated our slaves well" trope is all too common in literature, and was certainly a common belief of Southern enslavers. Writing for children, however, carries a responsibility. Denenberg should have made an effort to portray Emma's worldview while simultaneously challenging it. He did not, either in the text itself or the historical endnotes. This was a missed opportunity that makes the book unsuitable for young readers to read independently (although it is still a useful text for guided reading if teachers/parents prompt readers to reflect on Emma's worldview and potentially pair this with another diary from a different perspective).
In addition to this major shortcoming, the book fails on a stylistic point. It ends abruptly without any resolution.
February 6, 2018
Young Emma Simpson lives in Virginia in 1864 during the middle of Civil War. She writes in her diary about the trials, Emma, her mother and other family members survive through. The men in the family are fighting in the War. Food rations start to dwindle as family and friends get sick and some die. Based on a real person we see the dark side of war in America’s past.
I find these Dear America books interesting and wish I had them when I was younger. They do tend to be pretty dark. I guess that is to show children they have it easier these days. These Dear America book do usually end with death of the diary writer or just an abrupt ending, which probably meant death as well. This one I am happy to say actually has info on what really happened to Emma after the war.
As I mentioned I dislike the fact that the stories are so dark, in these series of books. I do not know how much of the diaries are real or made up but i guess when people usually write in their diaries it is not because something good is happening or you are working out some happy through your mind. It would be nice to read one Dear America with a happy conclusion.
I will continue to read the dear america books because they have a charm about them and they make me feel like I am learning. I do wonder how close they are to the actual history but how will I ever know.
I find these Dear America books interesting and wish I had them when I was younger. They do tend to be pretty dark. I guess that is to show children they have it easier these days. These Dear America book do usually end with death of the diary writer or just an abrupt ending, which probably meant death as well. This one I am happy to say actually has info on what really happened to Emma after the war.
As I mentioned I dislike the fact that the stories are so dark, in these series of books. I do not know how much of the diaries are real or made up but i guess when people usually write in their diaries it is not because something good is happening or you are working out some happy through your mind. It would be nice to read one Dear America with a happy conclusion.
I will continue to read the dear america books because they have a charm about them and they make me feel like I am learning. I do wonder how close they are to the actual history but how will I ever know.
July 18, 2024
Two of my favorite quotes that make this book iconic:
1. "I wonder if ugly people are able to find other ugly people and are actually attracted to them- although I am not so foolish as to think I am ugly. At times I feel quite pleased with myself especially if I am wearing a pretty dress and my hair is done in a fashion I think is flattering."
2. "One boy, whose name I cannot quite remember, which is no wonder, boldly introduced himself to me. Like most boys, he seemed to take great pride in. misunderstanding everything I said, twisting it this way and that and politely pointing out precisely where my thinking was in error, although I. honestly do not recall talking about anything that warranted such attention. There is nothing that troubles me more than people who. go out of their way to criticize everything you. say, holding each sentence under. a magnifying glass and repeating it. back to you in a completely unrecognizable fashion. Like most boys, he was more interested in debate than discussion, more concerns with the sound of his own words than what others were saying. He employed what I can only call. a. kind of false voice when he was about to orate on a particular subject. I do not know what it is about boys that causes them to think this behavior impresses girls but, frankly, it vexes me quite a bit."
I will not be reading this book to my class because there is very little historical context. Instead, it focuses on "Cousin Rachel" who doesn't want to get married and later gets sent to a mental institution because of it!
1. "I wonder if ugly people are able to find other ugly people and are actually attracted to them- although I am not so foolish as to think I am ugly. At times I feel quite pleased with myself especially if I am wearing a pretty dress and my hair is done in a fashion I think is flattering."
2. "One boy, whose name I cannot quite remember, which is no wonder, boldly introduced himself to me. Like most boys, he seemed to take great pride in. misunderstanding everything I said, twisting it this way and that and politely pointing out precisely where my thinking was in error, although I. honestly do not recall talking about anything that warranted such attention. There is nothing that troubles me more than people who. go out of their way to criticize everything you. say, holding each sentence under. a magnifying glass and repeating it. back to you in a completely unrecognizable fashion. Like most boys, he was more interested in debate than discussion, more concerns with the sound of his own words than what others were saying. He employed what I can only call. a. kind of false voice when he was about to orate on a particular subject. I do not know what it is about boys that causes them to think this behavior impresses girls but, frankly, it vexes me quite a bit."
I will not be reading this book to my class because there is very little historical context. Instead, it focuses on "Cousin Rachel" who doesn't want to get married and later gets sent to a mental institution because of it!
September 29, 2025
Alternative title: when will this chick ever stop whining?
In all seriousness, though, this is the most controversial Dear America book because of the protagonist’s attitude towards slavery, and the fact that her family owns slaves. While many of the things she said were extremely offputting, I do think that it was fairly accurate to how most young girls living on a plantation probably felt. I agree with many other reviewers that the author had a responsibility, however, to challenge the diarist’s views, and he never did, either in the text or the historical note. Emma’s assertions that their slaves were “happy”, “well cared for”, and “loyal” was just accepted as fact, and then, even when several of them ran away, it was because they were “ungrateful.” The protagonist never changes her views, and while this is realistic (unfortunately), it is the responsibility of an author writing children’s fiction to have some sort of character development, even if it goes over the protagonist’s head.
It is very interesting to read this one sandwiched between A Picture of Freedom and I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly. It would’ve been really cool if, during the 2010 relaunch, a companion novel has been written to this one from one of the enslaved people’s perspective on the Simpson plantation as a way of challenging Emma’s narrative. But of course, that would have required Barry Denenberg to get off his butt and do more than the bare minimum, which he doesn’t seem able to do (almost all of his installments in the series ringing around 120 pages with enormous font and super strange formatting choices to make the book longer.)
Lastly, this book is almost unreadable due to the main character’s verbose whining. I actually do have sympathy for people in the Union AND the Confederacy (because I am a human being with a heart). War sucks! It sucks to lose family members, and it sucks to have your house ransacked. However, this girl does. Not. Stop. Whining. In every single entry, she says something super laughably dramatic like “I am growing thin and pale. I no longer can even weep.” And while lots of stuff really does suck about the way her life is going, and I would probably be the same way or worse, it is not a pleasant reading experience, and when the character spends less time explaining what is going on in her life and more time just talking about how sad she is and how there’s a hole in her heart, my sympathy begins to wane. In my recent review The Land of the Buffalo Bones, I pointed out how I didn’t mind that the protagonist complained a lot, and that’s because she didn’t use laughably verbose phrases, and only complain without explaining what was going on in her life. It was handled much better, which is the difference. Complaining is fine, but there needs to be a balance between plot and whining.
In all seriousness, though, this is the most controversial Dear America book because of the protagonist’s attitude towards slavery, and the fact that her family owns slaves. While many of the things she said were extremely offputting, I do think that it was fairly accurate to how most young girls living on a plantation probably felt. I agree with many other reviewers that the author had a responsibility, however, to challenge the diarist’s views, and he never did, either in the text or the historical note. Emma’s assertions that their slaves were “happy”, “well cared for”, and “loyal” was just accepted as fact, and then, even when several of them ran away, it was because they were “ungrateful.” The protagonist never changes her views, and while this is realistic (unfortunately), it is the responsibility of an author writing children’s fiction to have some sort of character development, even if it goes over the protagonist’s head.
It is very interesting to read this one sandwiched between A Picture of Freedom and I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly. It would’ve been really cool if, during the 2010 relaunch, a companion novel has been written to this one from one of the enslaved people’s perspective on the Simpson plantation as a way of challenging Emma’s narrative. But of course, that would have required Barry Denenberg to get off his butt and do more than the bare minimum, which he doesn’t seem able to do (almost all of his installments in the series ringing around 120 pages with enormous font and super strange formatting choices to make the book longer.)
Lastly, this book is almost unreadable due to the main character’s verbose whining. I actually do have sympathy for people in the Union AND the Confederacy (because I am a human being with a heart). War sucks! It sucks to lose family members, and it sucks to have your house ransacked. However, this girl does. Not. Stop. Whining. In every single entry, she says something super laughably dramatic like “I am growing thin and pale. I no longer can even weep.” And while lots of stuff really does suck about the way her life is going, and I would probably be the same way or worse, it is not a pleasant reading experience, and when the character spends less time explaining what is going on in her life and more time just talking about how sad she is and how there’s a hole in her heart, my sympathy begins to wane. In my recent review The Land of the Buffalo Bones, I pointed out how I didn’t mind that the protagonist complained a lot, and that’s because she didn’t use laughably verbose phrases, and only complain without explaining what was going on in her life. It was handled much better, which is the difference. Complaining is fine, but there needs to be a balance between plot and whining.
June 15, 2017
1 star for When Will This Cruel World Be Over?
Thoughts and Plot
Emma Simpson is a 14 year old, wealthy, white girl from Virginia whose father is off fighting in the civil war for the south (as they are slave plantation owners).
This book is not an apt representation of how it was in the south before or during the war. The author has Emma saying things like how her and her mother hold a weekly lesson for the slave children, where they read them stories from the bible and teach them how to read and write. This makes no sense because very few slaves were taught to read and write. Most were severely beaten for trying to learn to read because plantation owners didn’t want them to be able to send and receive information that wasn’t in accordance to what their owner’s wanted them to know. I’m pretty sure there was even a law about that in Virginia.
I know the author was probably trying to play down how terrible things were for slaves in the south, but as a non-fiction author, you would think they’d stick to the facts and not completely go off from history in such a way. Another example is trying to portray his narrator and her family as kindly shepherds to the poor black slaves isn’t realistic. But Emma repeatedly says, they only ‘discipline’ when it is in dire need and that her father is a kindly but firm owner. That all the slaves love them. Please. Maybe she didn’t know, but as a 14 year old girl, I think she would know where or not someone was disciplined in the fields for whatever perceived offense they committed. Therefore I think it’s safe to assume that the author was once again trying to make it look like slavery wasn’t as terrible as it actually was.
Moving on from that…Emma was a terribly boring young lady of 14. Her diary is short, dry, dull and the only time she has any long entries is to complain about her cousin, whine about the war being so hard on HER, pine after a boy she only talked to for one evening at a dance, and once and awhile talk about letters she got from said boy or her father…who only writes 3-4 times in the whole book! Oh and she does like to go on about her views on marriage in contrast to her cousin’s views. Tiresome.
People are supposed to be starving to death, but you rarely hear about it. Emma only makes passing comments like “I can’t remember the last time we had beef!” or “funny how things you used to take for granted are now so precious, like baking soda, sugar-“ blah blah blah. But it seems like she somehow rarely goes hungry. I know if I kept a journal and I was hungry, you’d hear about it every entry! Emma does mention not being able to get new clothes, not dressing up anymore, etc but you never hear her say there was no food to eat or medicine to have! All these supplies were cut off that far into the war, so where is it all coming from???
The only half decently interesting person was “Cousin Rachel” who is the only Rachel in the book, so I’m not sure why she’s always “Cousin Rachel.” Who else would she be talking about when she constantly complains no one visits??? Anyhow, “Cousin Rachel” was originally obsessed with marriage (If I remember correctly) then suddenly turns against it. Since her and Emma arguing over marriage take up so much of the book you bring to wonder if maybe Rachel was rejected at some point and that’s what turned her opinion of marriage so sour. I secretly hoped that something interesting from her past would be revealed and you spend the whole book hoping only to get to the Epilogue and discover nope, that’s not it at all. She’s just nuts and that’s why she has some valid concerns about marriage and a full rage on against it. Boring and disappointing.
There other thing I disliked was how many one sentence entries there were. What a waste of paper! Most of them could have been excluded to save trees! Of course you would then have to call the book a short story because it was short enough as it was.
I copied down some examples so you could get a feel for how terrible it was:
Wednesday, January 13, 1864 - I never realized how happy I was until this war besieged our land.
Tuesday, February 16, 1864 - There are many reports of smallpox in the area.
Tuesday, February 23, 1864 - Mother remained in bed all day.
Wednesday, March 23, 1864 - Mother is still feeling poorly.
Monday, April 18, 1864 - Mother died today.
Tuesday, May 10, 1864 - We received word of the death of Lieutenant Walker.
Tuesday, May 24, 1864 - Cousin Rachel and I talked in my room again this evening.
Saturday, July 9, 1864 - My watch is broken.
Sunday, July 24, 1864 - The weather is quite warm today.
Saturday, December 3, 1864 - We wait in breathless anticipation for news.
Sunday, December 11, 1864 - How long O Lord, how long?
Thursday, December 22, 1864 - I am growing thin and feeling weak. I can no longer even weep.
In Conclusion
This Dear America was sadly lacking. For such an interesting time period it was boring and extremely unrealistic. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Age range: anyone who’s old enough to stick with how boring it is
Content: Main character uses the word Negros a lot, some mention of war wounds but none go into great detail.
Thoughts and Plot
Emma Simpson is a 14 year old, wealthy, white girl from Virginia whose father is off fighting in the civil war for the south (as they are slave plantation owners).
This book is not an apt representation of how it was in the south before or during the war. The author has Emma saying things like how her and her mother hold a weekly lesson for the slave children, where they read them stories from the bible and teach them how to read and write. This makes no sense because very few slaves were taught to read and write. Most were severely beaten for trying to learn to read because plantation owners didn’t want them to be able to send and receive information that wasn’t in accordance to what their owner’s wanted them to know. I’m pretty sure there was even a law about that in Virginia.
I know the author was probably trying to play down how terrible things were for slaves in the south, but as a non-fiction author, you would think they’d stick to the facts and not completely go off from history in such a way. Another example is trying to portray his narrator and her family as kindly shepherds to the poor black slaves isn’t realistic. But Emma repeatedly says, they only ‘discipline’ when it is in dire need and that her father is a kindly but firm owner. That all the slaves love them. Please. Maybe she didn’t know, but as a 14 year old girl, I think she would know where or not someone was disciplined in the fields for whatever perceived offense they committed. Therefore I think it’s safe to assume that the author was once again trying to make it look like slavery wasn’t as terrible as it actually was.
Moving on from that…Emma was a terribly boring young lady of 14. Her diary is short, dry, dull and the only time she has any long entries is to complain about her cousin, whine about the war being so hard on HER, pine after a boy she only talked to for one evening at a dance, and once and awhile talk about letters she got from said boy or her father…who only writes 3-4 times in the whole book! Oh and she does like to go on about her views on marriage in contrast to her cousin’s views. Tiresome.
People are supposed to be starving to death, but you rarely hear about it. Emma only makes passing comments like “I can’t remember the last time we had beef!” or “funny how things you used to take for granted are now so precious, like baking soda, sugar-“ blah blah blah. But it seems like she somehow rarely goes hungry. I know if I kept a journal and I was hungry, you’d hear about it every entry! Emma does mention not being able to get new clothes, not dressing up anymore, etc but you never hear her say there was no food to eat or medicine to have! All these supplies were cut off that far into the war, so where is it all coming from???
The only half decently interesting person was “Cousin Rachel” who is the only Rachel in the book, so I’m not sure why she’s always “Cousin Rachel.” Who else would she be talking about when she constantly complains no one visits??? Anyhow, “Cousin Rachel” was originally obsessed with marriage (If I remember correctly) then suddenly turns against it. Since her and Emma arguing over marriage take up so much of the book you bring to wonder if maybe Rachel was rejected at some point and that’s what turned her opinion of marriage so sour. I secretly hoped that something interesting from her past would be revealed and you spend the whole book hoping only to get to the Epilogue and discover nope, that’s not it at all. She’s just nuts and that’s why she has some valid concerns about marriage and a full rage on against it. Boring and disappointing.
There other thing I disliked was how many one sentence entries there were. What a waste of paper! Most of them could have been excluded to save trees! Of course you would then have to call the book a short story because it was short enough as it was.
I copied down some examples so you could get a feel for how terrible it was:
Wednesday, January 13, 1864 - I never realized how happy I was until this war besieged our land.
Tuesday, February 16, 1864 - There are many reports of smallpox in the area.
Tuesday, February 23, 1864 - Mother remained in bed all day.
Wednesday, March 23, 1864 - Mother is still feeling poorly.
Monday, April 18, 1864 - Mother died today.
Tuesday, May 10, 1864 - We received word of the death of Lieutenant Walker.
Tuesday, May 24, 1864 - Cousin Rachel and I talked in my room again this evening.
Saturday, July 9, 1864 - My watch is broken.
Sunday, July 24, 1864 - The weather is quite warm today.
Saturday, December 3, 1864 - We wait in breathless anticipation for news.
Sunday, December 11, 1864 - How long O Lord, how long?
Thursday, December 22, 1864 - I am growing thin and feeling weak. I can no longer even weep.
In Conclusion
This Dear America was sadly lacking. For such an interesting time period it was boring and extremely unrealistic. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Age range: anyone who’s old enough to stick with how boring it is
Content: Main character uses the word Negros a lot, some mention of war wounds but none go into great detail.
April 25, 2022
Wow, what? This is a very inaccurate and harmful portrayal of the Civil War. Wow. Really bad. “A Picture of Freedom”- Clotee’s diary is much better.
August 19, 2022
It was really good! Probably my third favorite of the series😊
February 14, 2020
The book , “When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864” by Barry Denenberg is a diary based book about a girl named Emma Simpson and experiences during the Civil War. I have never experienced war but to think that a young girl around my age went through crazy experiences with her family and death I cannot think how I could handle being put in her place. I definitely recommend this book to anyone from the ages 10 to 13 and anyone who is interested in learning more about wars and people‘s experiences.
May 13, 2019
A diary told from the perspective of a young teenage girl living in a small town in Virginia in 1864. That year is full of heartbreak and sorrow for the writer, Emma, leaving her asking all the time "when will this cruel war be over?"
I really enjoy the educational aspect of the Dear America books. I learned some things about the Civil War I didn't previously know. Love the chapter at the end explaining the history of the Civil War.
I did enjoy this book. I found some details to be lacking at times and therefore knocked off half a star. Otherwise I highly recommend this book to middle grade readers, young adult and adult alike. These books are so fun to read.
I really enjoy the educational aspect of the Dear America books. I learned some things about the Civil War I didn't previously know. Love the chapter at the end explaining the history of the Civil War.
I did enjoy this book. I found some details to be lacking at times and therefore knocked off half a star. Otherwise I highly recommend this book to middle grade readers, young adult and adult alike. These books are so fun to read.
February 6, 2021
1.5 stars
This book was very bad and very silly. By silly, I mean dumb, not humorous. The only things I liked about it were that it was short, and that Emma wrote in a vaguely old-timey way.
Everything else was bad. The title was bad. The plot was bad. There was no plot. Nothing happened. The plot (there wasn't one) could be best summarized as "Emma is racist and everyone dies." That's it. That was the whole book. Someone died every two pages. The narrator was bad. Emma was annoying and I didn't like her. She was racist and antifeminist. She was very whiney. I know she was living through war times and her life sucked, but she annoyed me with her whining anyway. She was completely oblivious to the world around her. She was immensely sheltered. She was just no fun. I bet she would have grown up to be an old spoilsport. She seemed like a loser who would come into your life and suck out all your energy and steal your joy. I am only being a little bit dramatic.
Not only was Emma racist and antifeminist, the entire book was racist and antifeminist. I am pretty sure Emma is meant to be sympathetic, and when you have a sympathetic character talking about how slavery is okay and her family is nice to their slaves, you send the message that the character is right because you're supposed to like them and trust them. Maybe the author meant for Emma to be a villain, but it's not obvious to me, and either way, he's sending kids the message that slavery actually isn't that bad. I'm glad I didn't read this book when I was younger. I don't know how I would have turned out. I mean, other books in this series convinced past-Clara that 15-year-old girls are old enough to get married. It took me a worryingly long time to learn that's definitely not true.
When Will This Cruel War Be Over is very silly and absolutely the worst Dear America book I've ever read.
This book was very bad and very silly. By silly, I mean dumb, not humorous. The only things I liked about it were that it was short, and that Emma wrote in a vaguely old-timey way.
Everything else was bad. The title was bad. The plot was bad. There was no plot. Nothing happened. The plot (there wasn't one) could be best summarized as "Emma is racist and everyone dies." That's it. That was the whole book. Someone died every two pages. The narrator was bad. Emma was annoying and I didn't like her. She was racist and antifeminist. She was very whiney. I know she was living through war times and her life sucked, but she annoyed me with her whining anyway. She was completely oblivious to the world around her. She was immensely sheltered. She was just no fun. I bet she would have grown up to be an old spoilsport. She seemed like a loser who would come into your life and suck out all your energy and steal your joy. I am only being a little bit dramatic.
Not only was Emma racist and antifeminist, the entire book was racist and antifeminist. I am pretty sure Emma is meant to be sympathetic, and when you have a sympathetic character talking about how slavery is okay and her family is nice to their slaves, you send the message that the character is right because you're supposed to like them and trust them. Maybe the author meant for Emma to be a villain, but it's not obvious to me, and either way, he's sending kids the message that slavery actually isn't that bad. I'm glad I didn't read this book when I was younger. I don't know how I would have turned out. I mean, other books in this series convinced past-Clara that 15-year-old girls are old enough to get married. It took me a worryingly long time to learn that's definitely not true.
When Will This Cruel War Be Over is very silly and absolutely the worst Dear America book I've ever read.
February 6, 2011
Born into a wealthy Southern family that owned a large plantation, Emma Simpson had a carefree life until the Civil War began. But then the war changed her life forevr. Her father, brother, uncle, and the young man she loves go off to war, and her brother and uncle died. Emma thought the hardships of war would be mostly suffered by the soldiers on the battlefield, but she was wrong and now life on their plantation has become very difficult.
First, there are rumors that the slaves Emma always thought were faithful to her family plan to run away. Deserters from both sides raid the farm, stealing the food Emma, her mother, and her aunt and cousin, who have come to stay for the remainder of the war, need in order to survive. And when her already frail mother becomes desperatley ill, and soon dies, Emma has only her aunt and cousin to turn to. But things become even worse when Yankees invade the peaceful countryside and take over Emma's house to use as headquarters. Confined to an upstairs room, Emma has now lost the one thing left of her life before the war. But she is determined to never give up and wait for the day her father and sweetheart will return home to her.
When Will This Cruel War Be Over? was one of the first Dear America books I read from the series back in 1996. It wasn't one of my favorites, maybe because it was so bleak and depressing and there were few happy moments. The book does show very realistically how life would have changed for a wealthy Southern girl during the Civil War. As I said, this wasn't one of my favorite Dear America books, so I'd recommend this book to readers who already enjoy the series, if you are new to the series I'd probably recommend starting with one of the other books, unless you are really interested in the Civil War.
First, there are rumors that the slaves Emma always thought were faithful to her family plan to run away. Deserters from both sides raid the farm, stealing the food Emma, her mother, and her aunt and cousin, who have come to stay for the remainder of the war, need in order to survive. And when her already frail mother becomes desperatley ill, and soon dies, Emma has only her aunt and cousin to turn to. But things become even worse when Yankees invade the peaceful countryside and take over Emma's house to use as headquarters. Confined to an upstairs room, Emma has now lost the one thing left of her life before the war. But she is determined to never give up and wait for the day her father and sweetheart will return home to her.
When Will This Cruel War Be Over? was one of the first Dear America books I read from the series back in 1996. It wasn't one of my favorites, maybe because it was so bleak and depressing and there were few happy moments. The book does show very realistically how life would have changed for a wealthy Southern girl during the Civil War. As I said, this wasn't one of my favorite Dear America books, so I'd recommend this book to readers who already enjoy the series, if you are new to the series I'd probably recommend starting with one of the other books, unless you are really interested in the Civil War.
February 16, 2016
This is a rare dud in the Dear America series. I was expecting to really enjoy it since the Civil War is one of my favorite periods in American history, but unfortunately the horrible writing sucked all of the fun out of this book for me.
The one thing that I liked about this book was that the protagonist, Emma, loved books and often related emotionally with the characters she read about. It's always nice to have a character with a love for reading and it was nice to see that portrayed positively.
That was pretty much the only positive this book had. The diary entries were short and uninspired. Emma's voice did not feel like a fourteen year old girl's and was inconsistent - one entry she would sound something like "I ardently pray for the safe return of our valiant Confederate troops and passionately long for a solution to this seemingly eternal conflict between the states!" while the next entry would be like "I wonder if boys think that I'm pretty?" I feel that this was because the author had very little insight into the mind of a teenage girl.
Not to mention that the book was very, very boring. Even when fairly interesting things start to happen in the plot the dull writing keeps the reader from ever feeling involved in the story. Plus there were historical inaccuracies, as other reviewers pointed out.
I was so disappointed with this, especially because I think that a diary from the perspective of a Confederate girl could have been really interesting. I wouldn't recommend this one, even if you're a fan of the series.
The one thing that I liked about this book was that the protagonist, Emma, loved books and often related emotionally with the characters she read about. It's always nice to have a character with a love for reading and it was nice to see that portrayed positively.
That was pretty much the only positive this book had. The diary entries were short and uninspired. Emma's voice did not feel like a fourteen year old girl's and was inconsistent - one entry she would sound something like "I ardently pray for the safe return of our valiant Confederate troops and passionately long for a solution to this seemingly eternal conflict between the states!" while the next entry would be like "I wonder if boys think that I'm pretty?" I feel that this was because the author had very little insight into the mind of a teenage girl.
Not to mention that the book was very, very boring. Even when fairly interesting things start to happen in the plot the dull writing keeps the reader from ever feeling involved in the story. Plus there were historical inaccuracies, as other reviewers pointed out.
I was so disappointed with this, especially because I think that a diary from the perspective of a Confederate girl could have been really interesting. I wouldn't recommend this one, even if you're a fan of the series.
February 12, 2025
Read for Popsugar: A book with a question in the title
Reading all the Dear Americas and Royal Diaries (47/63)
Another one to rate lower reading it in my old age. I suppose it honestly captures some sentiments of southerners in those days, but it really leans into the paternalistic, religious view of shepherding the enslaved people because they aren't smart enough to take care of themselves, and the enslaved people being soooo grateful and loyal for it. It's hard to hear Emma parroting back the views her parents held and justifying it all (but haven't we all done the same thing?). And we hate to see Cousin Rachel labeled "hysterical" for just speaking out against tradition. It is compelling (and hard) to read about turmoil our nation experienced, and read about the personal losses. I'm looking forward to pairing this one with Clotee's book.
Reading all the Dear Americas and Royal Diaries (47/63)
Another one to rate lower reading it in my old age. I suppose it honestly captures some sentiments of southerners in those days, but it really leans into the paternalistic, religious view of shepherding the enslaved people because they aren't smart enough to take care of themselves, and the enslaved people being soooo grateful and loyal for it. It's hard to hear Emma parroting back the views her parents held and justifying it all (but haven't we all done the same thing?). And we hate to see Cousin Rachel labeled "hysterical" for just speaking out against tradition. It is compelling (and hard) to read about turmoil our nation experienced, and read about the personal losses. I'm looking forward to pairing this one with Clotee's book.
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