Before the Civil War, there was the prairie. The Sangamon Story brings to life selected readings from Francis Grierson's The Valley of Shadows — the lost American memoir of Abraham Lincoln's Illinois — narrated by Kirk Laughead. These are the chapters at the heart of the book: the Shepard family in the Big Log House on the Sangamon County prairie, their deep involvement in the abolition movement, and the small family farm that became an unscheduled stop on the Underground Railroad.

Written at the dawn of the twentieth century, Grierson captured a world that was neither North nor South, neither for slavery nor against it — camp meetings and prairie fires, larger-than-life pioneers, and the moral reckoning of a nation on the edge of war. The prose has been called Shakespeare of the prairie; the book reads like a cross between Tom Sawyer and Uncle Tom's Cabin. What the critics said: “It has a quality not to be found in any other writing about the Civil War.” “Its prose is alive, strong, subtle, of warm color, almost overpowering.” “No one can read it without finding new enlightenment about our past.” A companion eBook of the full text is available at thevalleyofshadows.com.

What people are saying:
“It has a quality not to be found in any other writing about the Civil War;'
'Its prose is alive, strong, subtle, of warm color, almost overpowering;'
'No one can read it, without finding new enlightenment about our past.”