Publisher's Synopsis
"O Why Be Proud?" is the epic saga of a black slave, who in an effort to serve and help comfort others who have fought there, becomes a hero and dies on a Civil War battlefield. As her plot strands multiply and intertwine against a series of ever-more-astonishing tableux, Hartley depicts the establishment and growth of the city of New Orleans, which in the early nineteenth century was known as the "city of sin" where "most nights, there was a murder or a robbery." Here is historical fiction at its best, an indelible portrait of a fascinating period in America's past.
