Our weekly program, Missouri State Journal, is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and Missouri State University. It's hosted and produced by MSU's Office of Strategic Communication, and it airs each Tuesday morning at 9:45 a.m. on KSMU.
What happens when love letters meet a battlefield? Today we’re talking about Henry and Cimbaline Fike, a young couple whose devotion endured even as their world fell apart during the U.S. Civil War.
A trove of the couples love letters were found by Dr. Jeremy Neely, an associate history professor at Missouri State University. In his new book, “A Union Tested,” Neely unpacks the heartfelt correspondence between the Missouri couple across three years and 400 letters, taking us inside a Civil War-era romance tested by distance, danger and divided loyalties.
“A Union Tested” is available to purchase from the University of Georgia Press and on Amazon.
