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On March 15,
1865, three weeks before the end of the Civil War, twenty-year-old M. Jerome
Clarke was hanged as a Confederate guerrilla in Louisville, Kentucky, as a crowd
of thousands looked on. In the official charges against him, Clarke's
description included the alias "Sue Mundy." By the time of his execution, Sue
Mundy had earned a reputation as the region's most dangerous and enigmatic
female outlaw.
Sue
Mundy is the story of Jerome Clarke, a quiet orphan boy who follows a near
relative into the ranks of the Confederate infantry. Following his capture by
Union forces and his subsequent escape, Jerome joins John Hunt Morgan's
notorious Raiders.
After Morgan's
death, Jerome becomes a Confederate "irregular," one of the many guerrillas in
Kentucky who ignored the rules of military engagement and the laws of the land.
As stability and familiarity disappear from his and his compatriots' lives,
Jerome is unwillingly transfigured by the chaos of war and the efforts of an
ambitious journalist into Sue Mundy, she-scourge of Kentucky Unionists.
Richard
Taylor seamlessly joins narrative and history to tell the compelling story of
the Civil War in a state dangerously divided, neighbor against neighbor.
Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Sue Mundy reveals the
psychology of one of the Civil War's most fascinating figures while providing an
accurate account of this tumultuous period in American history.
Richard Taylor is professor and resident creative writer at Kentucky State University. A former poet laureate for the Commonwealth of
Kentucky, Taylor has written several books, including Bluegrass, Earth
Bones, and Stone Eye.
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Kentucky Voices
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