News & Record (Greensboro, NC), August 12, 2009:

“. . . a family history ... and an interesting look at Reconstruction through the eyes of some prominent North Carolinians. The author, Suzy Barile, is a descendant of the couple . . . and that gives the book a personal touch. But the book is not sentimental; it is well-researched and draws its material from the letters, diaries and documents of its central ‘characters.’

    “‘Undaunted Heart’ is for your Civil War buff or for anyone interested in local history.”

Civil War Notebook, August 17, 2009:

“On Easter Sunday, 1865 a brigade of General Sherman’s army entered the sleepy hamlet of Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. The next day David Swain, the former governor of North Carolina, and president of the university, met with Smith Dykins Atkins, the General in charge, to formally surrender the city, and in the process invited him to dinner. Neither Swain nor Atkins knew it at the time, but it was an evening that would change both of their lives, for it was on that night, the General would meet the woman who would become his wife, Governor Swain’s daughter, Ella.

    “The author, Suzy Barile, great great granddaughter of Smith & Ella Atkins, has done an admirable job of telling their story. The star-crossed love affair between a Union General and a Southern Belle does carry with it an element or two from Romeo and Juliet. Relying heavily on family correspondence as well as journals and diaries of Chapel Hill locals Ms. Barile, gives her readers a nearly three dimensional view of her subjects, and their relationship that some found shocking and scandalous, and yet at the same time foreshadowed the reconciliation between the warring sections of the country that would ultimately take place many decades later.”

(...click here for entire review....http://civilwarnotebook.blogspot.com/2009/08/book-review-undaunted-heart.html)

From novelist Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill, The Last Girls, and the soon-to-be-published, Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger (Algonquin Books):

    “Not so happily ever after . . . . Finally, the book I've been waiting to read! After more than a century, here comes the whole story of spirited Ella Swain's ‘shocking’ marriage to the Yankee general who came to occupy Chapel Hill in 1865--meticulously researched and beautifully written by her great-granddaughter, Suzy Barile, with access to a treasure trove of  family letters. Ella’s is a great love story in every sense, from initial overwhelming passion through years of tragedy and loss--not so much from the War, surprisingly, as from the deaths of her beloved children and family, one after another. Her brilliance and beauty bound by her biology, Ella's life proved Ralph Waldo Emerson's remark, ‘As soon as there is life, there is danger.’  She was only 25 years old in 1868 when she wrote, ‘Oh let the sun shine into my life once more for already those days of darkness have been many. . . .’ Yet her regard for her ‘noble, generous . . . good, liberal, kind . . . best-loved and loving husband’ remained undiminished as Ella springs from history to testify in this passionate, moving love story.”

From Holden Thorp, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:

            

   “Undaunted Heart is a revealing glimpse into a critical period of University history, bringing to life names that can still be found on our campus. But it is more than just local history. Anyone who wonders how ordinary people built new lives after the Civil War will want to read this family’s story.”                                            

From Keats Sparrow, Dean Emeritus, Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, East Carolina University:

    “The great-granddaughter of Richard Caswell, North Carolina's first governor, and the daughter of three-term North Carolina Governor and at the time President of the University of North Carolina David Swain, young beautiful Ella Swain and the dashing Union General Smith Dykins Atkins were an unlikely match, to say the least, but at their first meeting each was smitten with the other. 

    Set against the backdrop of the South's defeat in 1865, their ensuing romance, betrothal, and marriage were scandalous, causing outrage among citizens throughout the state who demonized Atkins, one of the despised General William Tecumseh Sherman's officers in the conquest and occupation of North Carolina. 

    Suzy Barile's history of North Carolina's most infamous romance is so artfully told it reads like a novel.”

Eno Publishers   POBox 158   Hillsborough NC 27278   919.632.6893