Eliza Frances Andrews, known more familiarly as Fanny An

drews, is one of our own. We know her best as the author of A Wartime Diary of a Georgia Girl. Many of us have listened to Charlotte Ford and Dr. Kit Rushing tell about her life and work. There is a marker at the North Alexander School recognizing her contributions to science and education.

Now, Dr. Rushing has edited and the University of Tennessee Press has published one of her novels. A Family Secret, the first of her four novels, was first published in 1876, and was the best-selling novel of the year. Rushing says, “Andrews’ diaries and published articles document her evolution from a class-conscious, arrogant nineteenth-century Southern aristocrat into a socially conscious twentieth-century intellectual activist.”

In his introduction and the helpful comments he adds to the text, Rushing indicates why he believes that this rather “dated” book is worth reading and thinking about. “A Family Secret demonstrates and portrays the myths on which the South’s antebellum social structure rested, and it contains hints of the changes that were to come in Southern attitudes and values about the role of women, race, and class.”

A Family Secret takes place in the South, mostly in Georgia, during the last days of the Confederacy. Many episodes are based on events that Andrews experienced or that were told to her by friends, so much of the story has an air of authenticity. It is, however, a work of its time. Romance is fun, but impossibly noble men and beautiful, virtuous women may get a bit on twenty-first-century nerves.

Andrews later wrote textbooks and scientific articles. Here, though, she says that she intends “solely to amuse.” The reader may find, as this reviewer did, that he is caught up in the story, and reads “curious to know how it ends,” as an early critic commented. The story concerns Colonel Audley Malvern and Ruth Harfleur, whose path of true love does not run smoothly. Also stormtossed are Audley’s sister Julia and his friend George. One hopes for a happy outcome, but things look very gloomy for a while.

Meanwhile, the reader sees scenes of wagon trains, hunger, injuries, even Andersonville Prison. This reader did not know about the bands of deserters and escaped prisoners-of-war who hid in the Okefenokee Swamp. Descriptions of the Swamp and the countryside reflect Andrews’ later career as a botanist.

She also describes women’s clothing with a practiced eye. She was, though hardly a “women’s libber,” concerned about women’s role in the new society. One of her characters states, “There is no middle ground for us women except marriage, no door of escape from the miseries of poverty and dependence.” Though Andrews found her own escape (she never married) in the worlds of teaching, science, and literature, she believed that circumstances needed to change to “free” women from their traditional position.

Intelligent and realistic, she never lost her reverence for a vanished way of life. “The Southern heart is sound and generous at the core; and though often swayed by wild, untutored impulses, often led astray by vanity, and blinded by false flattery, it is always ready to unfold its better side if rightly and judiciously appealed to.”

A Family Secret is available at the Mary Willis Library.