{"product_id":"9781466879386","title":"Our Family Dreams: The Fletchers' Adventures in Nineteenth Century America","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the early years after the Revolution, Americans were on the move, seeking to establish a new way of life. And, more than the church or the school or the courthouse, it was the family that nurtured the American Dream.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this novel-like narrative, Daniel Blake Smith vividly brings to life the Fletchers, a family of loving, ambitious, at times insecure pioneers who scattered across the vast expanse of post-revolutionary America but  kept in touch through letters despite their wildly different life paths. On a hard scrabble farm in Vermont, the patriarch, Jesse Fletcher, struggled with debt and depression but managed to educate his children, especially his son Elijah, a Yankee who moved to Virginia, shocked by the horrors of slavery but then seduced by the plantation lifestyle.  Another son, Calvin, left at age 17 for Indianapolis to become a self-made lawyer, banker, and a prominent citizen and passionate abolitionist.  The grandchildren include Indiana, a women's education activist who donated her home to create Sweet Briar College; black sheep Lucian, who went to California to join in the gold rush; and physician Billy captured as a spy during the Civil War. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough letters and diaries, we find in \u003ci\u003eOur Family Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e that the Fletchers appear surprisingly similar to us; they dream, fret, fight, and love. Despite numerous heartaches and setbacks, their spirit of enterprise, sacrifice, mobility, and education endures as American values to this day.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"St. Martin's Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47163074052336,"sku":"9781466879386","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781466879386_p0.jpg?v=1769892140","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781466879386","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}