Going Public…in Shorts – 6/2

Karen White joins us today, offering The Death of a Solider by Louisa May Alcott, an intimate and poignant portrait of ministering to the wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. Karen and Nicole are also interviewing each other later this morning  over at Linus’s Blanket, today’s blog hop host.

Listening & Downloading 

The Death of a Solider is offered in full for online listening through June 8th. You can also purchase a download of this story via Downpour, with proceeds going to Reach Out and Read.

Karen White has been narrating audio books since 1999.  Honored to be included in Audiofile’s Best Voices 2010 and 2011, she’s also an Audie Finalist and has earned multiple Audiofile Earphones Awards.

Publishers Weekly says of  Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, “Karen White delivers a stunning reading, her character interpretations are confident and well-rounded, and she forges a strong bond with the audience.”

Speaking of Audiobooks says, “Karen is one of my auto-buy narrators – if I think a book may interest me, her narration will sway me to give it a try.”

You can find Karen at her blog, on Twitter or Facebook, or reach her via email.

 

 

Further information on The Death of a Solider 

Original Summary of Hospital Sketches:

A considerable portion of this volume was published in successive numbers of The Commonwealth, newspaper, of Boston. The sudden popularity the Sketches won from the general public, and the praise they received from literary men of distinguished ability, are sufficient reasons,–were any needed,–for their re-publication, thus revised and enlarged, in this more convenient and permanent form. As, besides paying the Author the usual copyright, the publisher has resolved to donate at least five cents for every copy sold to the support of orphans made fatherless or homeless by the war, no reproduction of any part of the contents now first printed in these pages, will be permitted in any journal. Should the sale of the little book be large, the orphan’s percentage will be doubled.

BOSTON, August, 1863.

Biography

Louisa May Alcott, though famous for her book Little Women, was also an ardent abolitionist and feminist.  Moved to become part of the Union effort in the Civil War, she volunteered to work as a nurse for the cause.  Alcott served for a short time in early 1962 before she contracted typhoid fever.  The treatment she suffered probably contributed to her lifelong health issues.  In her own words, “I was never ill before this time, and never well afterward.”

While volunteering, she sent home letters to her family.  A few months after her return, “she prepared them for publication, slightly altering and fictionalizing them. The narrator of the stories was renamed Tribulation Periwinkle but the sketches are virtually authentic to Alcott’s real experiences. Although the personal cost to her health was dear, this life-changing experience brought Alcott her first critical and popular acclaim, and lent a gravity to her work that can be seen in following works, including Little Women.  As she said, “I never have regretted that brief, yet costly experience…for all that is best and bravest in the hearts of man and woman comes out in times like those, and the courage, loyalty fortitude and self-sacrifice I saw and learned to love and admire in both Northern and Southern soldiers can never be forgotten.” (208, Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante)

 

Today’s Blog Host – Linus’s Blanket

Nicole has been writing Linus’s Blanket, for the last 5 years. Her focus is books, of which you’ll see a ton of posts, but she also blogs about food, comfort and culture. She has an author interview series that runs on Thursdays, and she loves to do giveaways of books that she have enjoyed or am greatly anticipating. When she’s not reading, she loves to eat, sleep, travel and play board and trivia games on Sunday afternoons. She is a recovering bocce addict. Nicole can be reached via email at nicole@linussblanket.com