Numbering all the Bones

The story of Eulinda’s life at the Pond Bluff Plantation, the impact of the Civil War, and her unavoidable interactions with the Andersonville Prison is told as a memoir. Eulinda’s recollection of those events is stirred when she walks past a pawnbroker’s shop in Washington, D.C. and sees a ruby ring that she recognizes as the family treasure that played a huge role in her life. Clara Barton, the famous nurse who rose to prominence by founding hospitals to treat Civil War soldiers, is Eulinda’s employer. Clara encouraged Eulinda to write down the tumultuous story of everything that happened to her and her family. Eulinda acknowledges she has trouble deciding the focus of the story, then remarks, “People ask now, ‘How can you people have lived all around that place and not known what went on there, inside the walls?’ Nobody believes that most people didn’t, that people can go about their daily chores and live and tolerate evil amongst them. But many did” (vi).

Eulinda begins by describing herself as a 13-year-old girl by the end of February 1864. A child with a white father and a Black mother, she is the illegitimate daughter of an enslaved cook, Mama, and