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Beyond the front lines of the Civil War

WLRN 91.3 FM | By Mia Laurenzo
Published July 4, 2018 at 11:08 PM EDT

MERCY STREET - Drama - Inspired by real people and events, Mercy Street takes viewers beyond the battlefield and into the lives of Americans on the Civil War home front.

PREMIERES Wednesday July 11th at 8pm 

"Mercy Street" tells the story of doctors, nurses, contraband laborers and Southern loyalists in Union-occupied Alexandria, Va., during the Civil War. The plot centers on two nurses on opposing sides of the war who volunteer at the Mansion House Hospital. Characters include nurse Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Jedediah Foster (Josh Radnor), James Green Sr. (Gary Cole), Dr. Alfred Summers (Peter Gerety) and Emma Green (Hannah James). Filmed on location in Virginia, the series is based on real people and real events and marks the first American drama to air on PBS in more than a decade.

https://youtu.be/vTtD9B5MEbASet in Virginia in the spring of 1862, Mercy Street follows the lives of two volunteer nurses on opposite sides of the conflict: Nurse Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a staunch New England abolitionist, and Emma Green (Hannah James), a naive young Confederate belle. The two collide at Mansion House, the Green family’s luxury hotel that has been taken over and transformed into a Union Army hospital in Alexandria, a border town between North and South and the longest Union occupied city of the war. Ruled under martial law, Alexandria served as the melting pot of the region: with soldiers, civilians, female volunteers, doctors, wounded fighting men from both sides, runaway slaves, prostitutes, speculators and spies. THE NEW NURSE - A New England nurse begins her duties in a Union hospital in an occupied Southern city.  

Mercy Street, Nurse Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)
Credit PBS
Mercy Street, Nurse Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)

New England nurse Mary Phinney navigates her first day in Mansion House, a hotel turned Union hospital in an occupied Southern town. Mansion House owner James Sr. struggles to preserve the family fortune as daughter Emma secretly searches for her beau.MEET THE CAST OF MERCY STREET 

Mercy Street
PBS /
Mercy Street
Mercy Street
PBS /
Mercy Street

Copyright 2018 WLRN 91.3 FM
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Mia Laurenzo
Mia Laurenzo is a 30-year veteran of public television in Miami. She began her career learning every aspect of video production. Currently she is a writer, producer, on-air host and promotions coordinator for TV, radio and the web. Her experiences include producing for a series, special events and historical documentaries. As a native Floridian, she is a perfect fit for South Florida's Storyteller Station, WLRN. She has produced award winning, nationally distributed documentaries like Journey to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade where one year she followed a high school band and a clown as they prepared for the big day and the next year, she had the privilege of being a clown herself. Previously, she produced Weird Florida: On the Road Again, a sequel to the highly successful show Weird Florida: Roads Less Traveled, where the cast and crew travel over 1,500 miles searching the Sunshine State’s weirdest and wackiest places. On a more serious note and what she considers to be her most important work, she produced Out of Darkness, Into Light, a documentary on child sexual abuse,which delved into the lives of three adult survivors, a show in which she was awarded her first of two Emmys.
See stories by Mia Laurenzo