In the spring of 1862, widowed Rachel Barnum leaves three children with her farm's hired man in Michigan to embark on either a fool's errand or a hero's journey. Traveling alone into the heart of darkness, Rachel needs to find her son Dwight, a Union soldier dying hundreds of miles away on a Missouri battlefield.
When a large Rebel force entrenched on a Mississippi River island stymies her mission, Rachel fears she won't find Dwight in time to save him. And she despairs each day she's gone from her 10-year-old twin girls and another son, 16, who can't abide the hired man. With time running out, Rachel faces an agonizing decision: abandon her firstborn to the ravages of war and go back to family and the man she loves? Or fight on against all odds?
Until her death at age 96, Rachel reveled in sharing her life's tales as a pioneer wife and mother but never told what happened as the Civil War's second year began. The Woman She Left Behind is that story.