ABSTRACT
Before Augusta Jane Evans Wilson thought of herself as daughter, sister, wife, Christian, or writer, she was a Southerner. Interfamily reliance thematically drives Evans first novel, Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, when one of the families central to the novel, loses a mother. Evans first novel replayed not only a single historical battle, but battles fought by many Inezes. Although the story of the Evans family is not identical, its similarities with the fictive characters are striking. After a disastrous speculation, Mr. Hamilton loses his plantation, slaves, and money, and therefore decides to relocate with his girls to San Antonio. Hamilton's plantation was in Mississippi, but Evans father was also from the South, having been born in North Carolina. The movement of people west and more west is not only the story of Inez, it was the story of the Evans family, and it was the story of migration in early nineteenth-century America.
