John Douthit joined the Confederate Army in 1862 leaving behind on his small Fannin County, Georgia, hillside farm a wife pregnant with a daughter he would never see. Her great-great grand-daughter, Elaine Fowler Palencia, has found his Civil War letters and deeply researched his regiment’s history. Her background as the author of six works of fiction and four of poetry gives this book attention to plot, characters, setting, style and theme uncommon but deeply appreciated in works of non-fiction. "Elaine Palencia has written a richly-researched, and, in the end, poignant account of a Confederate foot soldier from the mountains of North Georgia. Building from the thirty surviving letters of Sergeant John M. Douhit to his wife Martha, Palencia describes an underappreciated campaign for the Cumberland Gap, the Rebel invasion of Kentucky, the fight for Vicksburg, and an increasingly divided home front. The poorly supplied soldiers of the 52nd Georgia marched 1,000 miles, all the while fighting disease, harsh weather, and their Yankee adversaries. Here is an opportunity for the reader to grasp the absolute uncertainties of life in the ranks of the Southern army."-W. Clifford Roberts, Jr.
Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2021. 194 pages with an index, Bibliography, illustrations and photographs. Hardback in dust jacket.