Susanna: the True and Tragic Story of Susanna Heatwole Brunk Cooprider by Karl Rhodes tells the true story of Susanna Heatwole Brunk, a Mennonite woman from Virginia. During the Civil War, she fled north between the Confederate and Union armies with her small child to join her husband, Henry Brunk, who had fled there to escape the conscription efforts of the Confederates. (As a Mennonite, Henry Brunk opposed warfare as a principle of conscience.) After the Civil War ended, the Brunk family traveled to Illinois and later to Kansas in covered wagon. Eight days after arriving in Kansas, Henry Brunk died, leaving Susanna a widow in a new home with seven young children (and she was expecting their eighth). Susanna endured fires, illnesses, poverty, locust plagues, and additional deaths in her family. She eventually remarried, wedding Matthias Cooprider in 1878, a widower with children from his first marriage. The couple had three children of their own, but their blended family experienced a great deal of strife. Throughout all her difficult experiences, Susanna kept her trust in God and passed on a legacy of faith.

Two of her sons were ordained as Mennonite ministers, one of whom was George R. Brunk, who became a significant Mennonite leader in Virginia during the first half of the twentieth century. Susanna’s grandsons, George II and Lawrence, conducted well-known tent crusades among the Mennonites during the 1950s and 1960s.

Karl Rhodes took the events of Susanna’s life and turned them into a story, lightly fictionalized at some points to keep the narrative flowing.

• Susanna: the True and Tragic Story of Susanna Heatwole Brunk Cooprider
• By Karl Rhodes
• ISBN 9798988495222
• Paperback binding