Tragic Souls of Love and War

Book excerpt: The Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina, is the setting of Tragic Souls of Love and War in the pre-Civil War era, during the Civil War, and after the war. The story is heavily based on facts of four strong women: Sarah Sampson, the Bellamy family’s slave cook; Belle Bellamy, the oldest Bellamy daughter; Mrs. Eliza Bellamy, the wife of Dr. John Bellamy; and Harriet Foote Hawley, the wife of Union general Joseph Roswell Hawley. She was an abolitionist and a first cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The mix of these four women and the fictional and extraordinarily charismatic Braxton Scott twist into a story that captures the loves and sorrows of a tragic time in our history that resembles the classic Gone with the Wind and reminds us of the sad reality of inequality that still exists today.