Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee

The cannons have finally stopped booming, and the Civil War is over. Hannalee Reed is home from the North, where she and her little brother, Jem, had been taken by Union soldiers to work in a Yankee mill. But the plucky quick-witted heroine of Patricia Beatty’s best-selling novel of the Civil War South, Turn Homeward, Hannalee, must leave again. This time it is for Atlanta, where her older brother, Davey is determined to make a new life for his family.

However reluctant she is, Hannalee faces this new upheaval and the hardships it brings with the same indomitable spirit and ever-hopeful optimism that saw her through her darkest hours up North. She finds work in a dry-goods store to help support her family She thwarts the efforts of a persistent Yankee officer who is searching for her. And when Davey is arrested for a crime he did not commit, Hannalee unhesitatingly puts herself in danger to prove his innocence.

Patricia Beatty weaves drama and suspense into her evocative, historically accurate picture of postwar Atlanta. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee is alive with the same type of emotional power, sweeping background, and unforgettable people as its companion volume.