Few readers of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind remained unmoved by how the strong-willed Scarlett O'Hara tried to rebuild Tara after the Civil War ended. This book examines the problems that Southern women faced during the Reconstruction Era, in Part I as mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of men burdened with financial difficulties and the radical Republican regime, and in Part II with specific illustrations of their tribulations through the letters and diaries of five different women. Two of the women are: a lonely widow with young children, Sally Randle Perry, struggling to get her life back together following the death of her husband in the war; and Virginia Caroline Smith Aiken, a wife and mother, born into affluence and security, trying to emerge from the financial and psychological problems of the postwar world.