Wild Sweeps the Wind
by Caroline D. Grimm
In 1857, Phebe Beach, a young woman from Bridgton, Maine was coming of age, beset by the constraints of society that expected her to marry and become in her words "a stocking darner and a baby manufacturer." She shared her frustrations in a diary she began writing that year. Her lively, lighthearted descriptions of her life soon gave way to tragedy as the nation hurtled into Civil War.