Roots and Ever Green: The Selected Letters of Ina Dillard Russell. (Book Reviews).

Roots and Ever Green: The Selected Letters of Ina Dillard Russell. Edited by Sally Russell. Southern Voices from the Past. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 1999. Pp. xxii, 357. $34.95, ISBN 0-8203-2138-9.)

Published in the series Southern Voices from the Past, this collection of letters by Ina Dillard Russell provides valuable insight into the lives of rural women in the New South. Author Sally Russell, a granddaughter of Ina Russell, culled this collection from over 3,000 letters found among family members, at the homeplace, and in the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia. The selected letters span the most active years of Ina's correspondence, from a young wife living in Winder, Georgia, in the 1890s, through 1933, when she served as "first lady" while her son Richard Russell Jr. was governor of Georgia.

Written mostly to her husband and children, these letters reveal that even in more prominent southern families, women played crucial roles in ensuring the livelihood of their families, households, and farms. Raising her thirteen children and managing a household and farm while her husband Richard was working away from home as a lawyer and judge consumed Ina's time. Additionally, her husband (and later, her son and her son-in-law) often ran for political office, adding even more strain to Ina's family and work responsibilities. Her letters offer a female perspective on politics, particularly the wear and tear that political races bring to family life. What continually strikes the reader is how Ina balanced everything in her life, from ensuring the cotton was picked on the farm and preparing birthday boxes for her children at school to writing a constant stream of letters to her many family members.

Ina's letters also suggest the many ways that roles and expectations for southern women were changing from her generation to that of her daughters. Women of Ina's generation often found their more traditional, nineteenth-century values in conflict with those of a new century. She bemoans, for example, her daughters' use of cosmetics (p. 88) and tries to assure daughter Marguerite that she should be happy raising her children and not yearn for more (pp. 249-50).

The author provides historical context and biographical background throughout the book in separate introductory and concluding chapters, prefatory background text to each chapter, and explanatory footnotes. As a family member, she had access to oral history accounts provided by Ina's children and grandchildren. At times, however, the reader may want or need additional information. A bibliography of sources on the Russell family and the region would have been useful. In some places where the editor provides a narrative description of events (as in the fascinating discussion about Ina's refusal to use birth control after the birth of her first son [p. 40]), the citations for her information are scarce.

Scholars and the general public alike will find this an engaging and accessible collection of primary source material on southern history.

ANN E. MCCLEARY
State University of West Georgia