Roger Pryor was an influential Virginia newspaper editor and politician before the war and a Democratic congressman in Washington until he resigned as the Southern states began to secede. His "fair lady," as he first addressed her, was the former Sara Agnes Rice, whose family had been in Virginia since 1680. Waugh (The Class of 1846) bases this engaging account of their lives and times in part on Roger's correspondence and on two memoirs that Sara wrote after the war. Commanding the Third Virginia regiment during the Civil War, Roger competently led through the Seven Days, Second Manassas and Antietam, where he was elevated to division command and failed terribly. He was relegated to a secondary command and eventually resigned in disgust, reenlisting as a private in a Virginia cavalry regiment. Captured at Petersburg in 1864, he was imprisoned in a New York fort until released in early 1865. While he was away from home, Sara coped with six children, scraping by for food, clothing and shelter during her long stay in the Petersburg area, but keeping the family intact. In late 1865, Roger went to New York City, invited by friends he had known before the war. He became a lawyer, struggled for several years, then made enough money to bring his family to the city, forging a successful legal career (and making speeches noting that he was glad the South lost and the nation was now reunited) before retiring in 1899. Waugh describes vividly the society in which the Pryors moved and their struggles during the war, but the reconstructed dialogue and breathless descriptions ("Sara's heart pounded as she read the telegram from Roger in Norfolk in May," begins one chapter) may deter the more historically minded. (Sept.)
