Ghosts of My Old Dominion: Memory and History from the New South

Ghosts of My Old Dominion stares down the long shadow of the Civil War to reveal how the past haunts the present. Author Greg Bottoms presents fourteen autobiographical tales about his experiences growing up in working-class Virginia during the 1970s and 1980s, followed by a meticulously researched novella that considers the horrors and sorrows Walt Whitman faced while caring for sick and wounded soldiers convalescing at hospitals in Virginia and Washington, DC, from 1862 to 1865.

This ingenious blend of memoir, biography, and criticism uncovers not only the ghosts of history but also the ghosts of a life held together despite it all. Bottoms confronts the legacy of racism in the American South, touching on matters of class and religion throughout his formative years and his own family's experience of white flight, and cutting through the noise of our current era to remind us of essential human things. Ghosts of My Old Dominion is a book of stories and a book about stories—and how even the most intimate moments in a life are always bled through with the colors of history. View Less