During a literary career that spanned half a century John William De Forest wrote more than a dozen novels in which he recorded the breadth and diversity of the American scene, from the mansions of New England to the poverty-ridden hovels of South Carolina, and portrayed a varied cast of character with attention to their human weaknesses as well as their strengths. At a time when readers sought sentimental or romantic stories, with an idealized view of life, he brought to the depiction of setting an eye for realistic detail and to his portrayal of character a conviction that it is often human folly rather than a propensity for vice or virtue that motivates mankind. His reputation rests largely on one novel, Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867), which has been praised for its artful descriptions of battle during the Civil War, its analysis of the psychology...