The Children Of Bladensfield

by Evelyn D. Ward

The Viking Press
40 photographs, $14.95

This book is a child’s-eye view of the Civil War, and of life before and during it on a modest Virginia estate called Bladensfield. Evelyn Ward wrote her reminiscences when she was an old woman to document for her descendants a vanished way of life. The childhood she describes with the precision of Laura Ingalls W’ilder was merry and loving, and her book-sunny, brave, and sad—is haunting. Peter Matthiessen, a grandnephew of the author and therefore one of the children of Bladensfield, contributes a graceful essay on the family and Bladensfield today.