The Civil War is remembered in American literature by works such as The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, March by Geraldine Brooks, and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. But the years following the war, Reconstruction, also offer a rich backdrop that have informed some of the greatest art in the country's canon. Books set in Reconstruction Era America ask how to rebuild after atrocity, how to love after war, and how to move toward a more perfect union. Read on to explore this rich body of literature and share your favorite Reconstruction Era books in the comment section below.

The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
"'The Unvanquished' presents Mr. Faulkner in his most communicative mood. He tells, fairly simply and directly, a story of the Sartoris family during the latter days of the Civil War and the early days of Reconstruction; and in doing so he adds a central chapter to the legends of Jefferson, that mythical township in Mississippi in which he has carved out his literary domain... The people of this book are closer to the great dream of the Old South; they are more obedient to its moral dictates and more hopeful of its fulfillment." - Harold Strauss, New York Times, 1938

Jubilee by Margaret Walker
"At first glance this Houghton Mifflin Prize Novel seems to travel the well worn sweet persimmon trail of Civil War novels--sparsely faceted characters bolstered by research into the vagaries of General Sherman's bristling and ragtag hordes. However, it is perhaps just because of the shades of the old Scarlet sagas, that this book achieves its peculiar poignancy, for the gallant South is reconstructed here through the living of Vyry, a young Negro woman, born a slave... An affecting novel, carried handsomely by the subject." - Kirkus Review, 1966

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
"Mitchell’s book and the film adaptation of it are a valuable document of the way the Lost Cause curdled into a regional religion. Mitchell’s treatment of black people doesn’t invalidate her still-relevant portrait of white ones... 'Gone With The Wind' captures both the terrors of total war, and the self-pity that lingered after the Confederacy’s defeat." - Alyssa Rosenberg, Washington Post, 2015

The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chestnutt
"A novel of purpose, and one of more than ordinary merit... The tale itself is an arraignment of 'the senseless and unnatural prejudice by which a race ascribing its superiority to right of blood permitted a mere suspicion of servile blood to outweigh a vast preponderance of its own.'" - Detroit Free Press, 1900

Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Morrison's truly majestic fifth novel—strong and intricate in craft; devastating in impact. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, this is the story of how former slaves, psychically crippled by years of outrage to their bodies and their humanity, attempt to 'beat hack the past,' while the ghosts and wounds of that past ravage the present... Morrison traces the shifting shapes of suffering and mythic accommodations, through the shell of psychosis to the core of a victim's dark violence, with a lyrical insistence and a clear sense of the time when a beleaguered peoples' 'only grace...was the grace they could imagine.'" - Kirkus Review, 1987

Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
"Mr. O'Neill gives not only size but weight in 'Mourning Becomes Electra,' which the Theatre Guild mounted at its own theatre for the greater part of yesterday afternoon and evening... To him the curse that the fates have set against the New England house of Mannon is no trifling topic for casual dramatic discussion, but a battering into the livid mysteries of life. Using a Greek legend as his model, he has reared up a universal tragedy of tremendous stature - deep, dark, solid, uncompromising and grim." - J. Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, 1931

Canaan by Donald McCaig
"Donald McCaig's Canaan is a panoramic snapshot of Reconstruction era America that captures the turmoil and human drama of a rapidly changing nation. Moving seamlessly between a multitude of characters and diverse settings, the novel follows several connected plotlines as men and women struggle with issues of race, shifting demographics, personal loss, and economic hardship. In the spirit of great southern writers like William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren, McCaig sifts through the aftermath of the Civil War and raises up from the ashes real people with real lives and real problems that readers can easily relate to." - Jack Trammell, Civil War Book Review