Susanna

Description

Susanna: the True and Tragic Story of Susanna Heatwole Brunk Cooprider by Karl Rhodes tells the true story of Susanna Heatwole Brunk, a Mennonite woman from Virginia. During the Civil War, she fled north between the Confederate and Union armies with her small child to join her husband, Henry Brunk, who had fled there to escape the conscription efforts of the Confederates. (As a Mennonite, Henry Brunk opposed warfare as a principle of conscience.) After the Civil War ended, the Brunk family traveled to Illinois and later to Kansas in covered wagon. Eight days after arriving in Kansas, Henry Brunk died, leaving Susanna a widow in a new home with seven young children (and she was expecting their eighth). Susanna endured fires, illnesses, poverty, locust plagues, and additional deaths in her family. She eventually remarried, wedding Matthias Cooprider in 1878, a widower with children from his first marriage. The couple had three children of their own, but