Roots and Ever Green: The Selected Letters of Ina Dillard Russell (Southern Voices from the Past, Women's Letters, Diaries and Writings)

Rating:
Summary: Letters of a Remarkable American Woman
Review: If you love things historical but don't necessarily love reading history, this book is a delightful way to learn about the South--not from a historian or a scholar, but from a mother teaching her children how to live in the times they were born in, nearly 100 years ago.

Sometimes we meet a person in a book we'd like to claim as family. Reading these letters of Ina Dillard Russell's found me wishing I were one of her 13 children--with a few dozen of these letters to call my very own.

The letters themselves are full of life-- as it was lived by real people-- in rural Georgia from the early part of this century to the Great Depression. They tell the story of a remarkable Southern family, headed by a remarkable Southern woman.

Born in 1868, Ina Dillard Russell grew up during Reconstruction. She married an Athens lawyer and future chief justice of the Georgia supreme court in 1891, and raised her family (which included future GA governor and U.S. senator Richard Russell) with a generous spirit, prudent advice, and loving guidance.

It's all there in the letters, which Ina wrote on any scrap of paper handy, usually as she held a baby on her lap! I found her comments on the challenges life presents and on how to rise gracefully to them, her tips on hygiene, diet, manners, and fashion, on study, perserverance and spirit, not only a tonic and a charm, but a key to the tenor of the times.

Since we can't all be Ina's children, the recipients of most of these treasures, we have Ina's editor (and grandaughter) Sally Russell to thank for selecting them from the nearly 3000 letters Ina wrote and passing them on. Russell's editorial comments to each of the five chapters are rich in anecdote, history and heart. She explains just enough about the people involved, and then wisely allows Ina to speak for herself.

For the letters themselves tell Ina's story better than narrative ever could. She gives herself so freely to the page, expends her energy so fully on paper, that by the end of the book I'd come to feel I'd actually met her, had spent time with her in the kitchen or on the front porch swing. She's part of my family now, and I refuse to let her go.