Love and Valor: The Intimate Civil War Letters (2009)

Love story between a man and a woman during the American Civil War, told through actual letters. Ritner, a Union captain from Iowa, was a teacher, farmer and abolitionist before the war. He was devoted to Emeline, and this story tells of his patriotism, loneliness, anguish at the death of loved ones, and slavery. Em raised four small children, managed the family farm and dealt with other women in town. Jacob witnessing death of family and friends, participating in a great adventure, seeing new lands, changing views on the South. Jacob and Emeline's great great grandson, Charles Larimer, also reveals how he found the letters between his parents, and finds the actual graves of the people mentioned in the letters.