For two and a half years (1937-1939), Captain John Seymour Letcher commanded a company of the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard in Peking. During that time, he wrote a series of letters to his parents in Virginia describing the life of a Westerner in the former imperial city. During that same time, China was invaded by Japan.

Captain Letcher describes the flavor of life in pre-Communist China -- the food, servants, cold Peking winters and torrid summers, hunting, and excursions to the major tourist sites.

But his letters also tell of the Japanese slaughter of Chinese troops in the opening...

She was the daughter of a circuit judge and state senator. He was the youngest son of Virginia's Civil War governor and a state legislator himself at the age of nineteen. Their courtship and marriage stands as a portrait of a bygone way of life unique to the American South during the first half of the twentieth century. My Dearest Angel is their story, told through their long and passionate correspondence over the trial of their fifty years together. Piecing together the voluminous letters, their granddaughter, noted author Katie Letcher Lyle, has succeeded in giving us an intimate panoroma...

She was the daughter of a circuit judge and state senator. He was the youngest son of Virginia's Civil War governor and a state legislator himself at the age of nineteen. Their courtship and marriage stands as a portrait of a bygone way of life unique to the American South during the first half of the twentieth century. My Dearest Angel is their story, told through their long and passionate correspondence over the trial of their fifty years together. Piecing together the voluminous letters, their granddaughter, noted author Katie Letcher Lyle, has succeeded in giving us an intimate panoroma...