GittinThrough sets this turning point in American history in a small southern town where traditions, class and race defined its citizens and the roles they played. It shows how the three generations coped with the conflict while they made a living, reared their families, took care of the elderly, fell in love, lost loved ones, struggled to hold a marriage together, and choose right and wrong ways to profit from the war. Like all generations, they carried the burdens of the past into their own times in order to prepare for the future.

"Sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, but always genuine and fascinating, Gittin' Western opens a window into a lifestyle most of us have dreamed about but few dared to pursue. Heartily recommended." -Kathy Tyers, best-selling author of Firebird Trilogy Refusing to live a life of quiet desperation, Duane Wiltse breaks the bonds of the status quo by leaving his extended family and job security in Michigan. Seeking the freedom and adventure of living on a ranch in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, the Wiltse family relocates so their patriarch can wholeheartedly pursue his goal of establishing a big game hunting business in the rugged Wyoming landscape. Through the professional dangers of forest fires, bear attacks, and runaway horses and mules-and the personal challenge of coping with illness, divorce, and grief-Wiltse learns first-hand lessons of life and death. This engaging memoir vividly reveals the complexities of a maturing man, enterprising father, and driven husband struggling to achieve his dream.

From the Civil War to the Cuban independence movement to WWI, this historical epic follows the incredible life of a woman tragically bound to bloodshed. War brings about many strange events, but none stranger than the bullet that impregnated sixteen-year-old Annielise Quinn at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863. After passing through the groin of a Confederate soldier, the bullet lodged itself in her pelvis. Such was the portentous beginning of Beverly Bethany Quinn, the “bullet baby” whose life was fated never to escape the perils of war. By 1915, Bethany thinks she has finally found peace, until a call from the British Crown brings a shocking revelation. To aid the Allies in the Great War overseas, England would like to purchase a cache of rifles owned by her family’s sugar mill in Cuba—a cache that Bethany never knew existed. Years ago, Bethany and her uncle Jonathan supplied guns to the Cuban rebels against Spain. Has her uncle doomed her from beyond the grave to take part in slaughter once again? In preparation for the journey of her “special cargo,” Bethany sits down with her mother’s old diary, returning to that fateful day in 1863, and unfolding an epic journey of war, survival, love, and betrayal spanning decades and nations.

The Carolina Rebels of Company K, Holcombe Legion, were true sons of the Upstate. Brothers, cousins, and neighbors- all were well-suited for service in the independent brigade commanded by OlShanks (Brig. Gen. Nathan Evans). The boys of Company K wore out many a set of boots tramping with the Legion wherever the regiment was needed- Charleston, Richmond, Malvern Hill, Rappahannock Station, Manassas Junction, Kinston, Wilmington, Jackson, Savannah and Petersburg. One member of Co. K tells the story of his adventures with the legion, his capture at Stony Creek, his dramatic escape from the infamous Union prison in Elmira, New York, and his harrowing trek back to Virginia through the mountains of Pennsylvania and Maryland, helped along the way by copperheads, Dunkards and Dutch.

"Rabbinic Tales of Destruction examines early Jewish accounts of the Roman conquest of Jerusalem from the perspective of the wounded body and the scarred land. Amidst stories saturated with sexual violence, enslavement, forced prostitution, disability, and bodily risk, the book argues that rabbinic narrative wrestles with the brutal body costs of Roman imperial domination. It brings disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought to accounts of rabbinic catastrophe, revealing how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud's longest account of the destruction of the Second Temple, the book reveals the distinctive sex and gender politics of Bavli Gittin. While Palestinian tales frequently castigate the "wayward woman" for sexual transgressions that imperil the nation, Bavli Gittin's stories resist portraying women's sexuality as a cause of catastrophe. Rather than castigate women's beauty as the cause of sexual sin, Bavli Gittin's tales express a strikingly egalitarian discourse that laments the vulnerability of both male and female bodies before the conqueror. Bavli Gittin's body politics align with a significant theological reorientation. Bavli Gittin does not explain catastrophe as divine chastisement. Instead of imagining God as the architect of Jewish suffering, it evokes God's empathy with the subjugated Jewish body and forges a sharp critique of empire. Its critical discourse aims to pierce the power politics of Roman conquest, to protest the brutality of imperial dominance, and to make plain the scar that Roman violence leaves upon Jewish flesh"--