Because The Last Silk Dress is enticing not only as a romantic coming-of-age story but as historical fiction, the creation of a historically accurate setting is crucial for the novel's success. So, too, character development needs to be sewn into the historical fabric of the text in a seemingly seamless fashion. In The Last Silk Dress Rinaldi captures the historical setting beautifully; she does so while she presents a female protagonist who is fully sympathetic, particularly to teen-age girls. Rinaldi also makes the reader understand just how people, common people, could be caught up in the Confederacy. She paints Civil War Richmond (Virginia) in a way that the reader feels for its inhabitants while the city is under siege. Dramatic moments in Richmond's and the South's history are.described, such as the riot at Tredegar Iron Works.....
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