When He Was Gone

Elizabeth Garraux deeply loved her husband, Frederick, and he was willing to turn their lives upside down to please her. And yet, within years of a perilous Atlantic crossing, she ended up on her own in a new country with eleven children.
 
So how, during the tumultuous post-Civil War years in the deep South, was Elizabeth able to become a great success? It was a time of social upheaval, racial tension, and systemic misogyny, with women often treated as nothing more than their husband's property.
 
This novel is woven around the Garrauxs' true-life story -- one of triumphs and of tragedies so disturbing they were reported in newspapers across the country.
Elizabeth, five feet tall and 100 pounds, was truly indomitable. She shattered expectations and conquered adversity to create a new life in Greenville, South Carolina, despite her husband's mysterious absence.
 
Several years ago, I discovered that we currently live on the land that was once her home. And Elizabeth's unrelenting, insistent whispers from the past required that her story be told.

Carla Field was born and raised in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts and loved the history of that area. She has been writing professionally since the 1980s, and won several awards for short stories and poetry, before beginning a 25-year career as a TV and digital news journalist and manager, during which she was awarded several Associated Press, and Society of Professional Journalism awards, and an Edward R. Murrow Award.After years of working in cities from Austin to Miami, Field relocated to Greenville, S.C., another city with a rich history.In Greenville, Field uncovered a random bit of information in her own back yard that led to more than a year of research and writing "When He Was Gone."