St. Simons has Eugenia Price whose books portray its historical characters and setting. Now Eufaula, Alabama has Jacquelyn Cook, who has written a trilogy about the East Alabama port town and the surrounding Chattahoochee Valley during the nineteenth century. A presentation of fictional characters in a historical setting with historical background characters, Mrs. Cook s first book, The River Between, combines romance, history, and a Christian viewpoint of life. The remaining two books will be published in 1986.

By using fictional main characters, Mrs. Cook is free to describe the conflicts of the 1850 era in terms of the Christian viewpoint of the period contrasted with the Southern code of honor concerning dueling, parental authority, business practice, social rank, and marriage within family ties. The primary question of the authority of parents in choosing a husband for the heroine, Lily, brings out Lily’s dilemma of carrying the responsibilities of woman facing marriage and being treated as a child obedient to parental decision. Her spinster aunt portrays another traditional role of woman of the period who lives in hopeless subservience to her brother’s family.