Description: Highlighting the tenuous relationship between racial and gendered rhetoric throughout the nineteenth century, Marriage on the Border offers a fresh perspective on the institution of marriage and its impact on the social fabric of the United States.
Brief description: Allison Dorothy Fredette is assistant professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Her work has appeared in West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies and in Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom.
Review Quotes:
Fredette's study offers a lively glimpse into the private world of love, marriage, and divorce. The author's research into the court cases of separating couples reads, at times, like a collection of salacious tales of love found and lost. Perhaps it is such mining of often overlooked court records that makes this work a must-read for those interested in the personal lives of men and women living on the border.
-- "Virginia Magazine of History & Biography"