Books

by Mary Beachum

Georgia Girl:
A Grandmother’s Place in History
by David Henry Gambrell
Gateway Press, 2003

Sam Houston leaves Tennessee in shame after an annulled marriage. An Ursuline nun is imprisoned during the French Revolution for protecting a priest. Toussaint Louverture leads a successful slave revolution in Haiti. Augusta enters an era of remarkable growth and prosperity in the early days of the nation. How these stories connect is a tale of the way in which genealogical research leads its followers into interesting byways of history.

For author David Gambrell, they’re all related to his heritage and to that of the Georgia Girl, his ancestress Anne Lartigue. Beginning with her portrait made in 1812, and a book by his grandfather, he began to look into the lives, cultures and legends of his forbears. As he traced his lineage, he began to focus on a group of early settlers in Augusta who were of French heritage, refugee planters dispossessed by their former slaves in Haiti. But sidetracks abound in genealogical research, and fascinating collateral relatives, like poor ever-so-great Aunt Madeline, the nun who defied the secularism of the “Reign of Terror,” always emerged.

Georgia Girl is written to the various relatives who share her heritage, but it has a wider interest for the general reader. It is an example of the way in which anyone can make a connection to history through the lives of his or her ancestors. The chapters on the life of Augusta in the early 1800s are of obvious interest. While Gambrell is eager to share the facts he learned, he is also honest about the frustrations and challenges of genealogical detective work. In one case, he located what appeared to be 12 different people named Thomas Grace living about the same time in the area within 50 miles of Augusta, but could never merge them into one or two. Too many things were left unrecorded for him to ever solve the mystery.

For Augustans, the chapters on Augusta’s history can be useful. For genealogists, the book stands as a well-written compilation of both a family history and the rewards and disappointments of family research.

Georgia Girl may be purchased through the Augusta Genealogical Society Library at 1109 Broad St. The AGS has several books on family history and genealogy available for sale in addition to its extensive collection of reference materials.

The White Road
by John Connolly
Atria Books, 2003

Right from page one of the prologue, The White Road assaults the reader with the gritty, grimy side of life and the dark recesses of the human soul, as Maine-based private eye Charlie Parker finds himself entangled with psychopaths who are worse than just killers. Reluctantly leaving his pregnant wife in danger, he travels to South Carolina to help an old friend, an attorney defending a young black man charged with the rape and murder of a prominent, white college girl.

While the theme, with its unveiling of long-hidden secrets, may be overused, the story is developed with compelling writing that elevates the book above a routine detective story. Fortunately for the reader, the general darkness is relieved by the author’s gift for humorous phrasing. Parker’s friend observes, “The New South was like the Old South, except everybody was ten pounds heavier.”

With its unrelenting violence and myriad characters embodying the nuances of cold-blooded cruelty, it becomes a study in the nature of evil. Author Connolly subtly suggests the underlayment of spiritual warfare, of which both detective Parker and his nemeses are unwitting players. Speaking of Parker, one character says, “Perhaps your friend is such an angel...an agent of the Divine: a destroyer, yet a restorer of harmony between worlds…your friend Parker is tormented by empathy, by his capacity to feel…He is destructive, and angry, but it is a righteous anger.”

The White Road is set in a South where the deep wound of racism is barely scabbed over and easily picked open, where the swamps hide their secrets for generations and the gracious old houses are built on broken bodies. Yet the book is not ultimately about the South, for Parker’s home in Maine is no less bent and bloody, but about the search for justice and retribution and the meaning of suffering in a callous world.

Georgia Curiosities
by William Schemmel
Globe Pequot Press, 2003

Somewhere in the gray area between folk art and tacky stuff, along the continuum from historic artifacts to weird old things, on the gradient of the unusual to the unique, lies the curiosity. It’s the sort of thing that a traveler might not drive far out of his way to see, but readily makes a detour to take it in. Who can resist getting their picture taken in front of a giant peanut with a Jimmy Carter grin or at the Pig Hill of Fame? If you happen to be near Adel in the first of December when the buzzards come back to Reed Bingham State Park, you might as well go say hello.

In its subtitle, Georgia Curiosities claims to contain “Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff.” The actual sites listed are really a hodgepodge of the author’s own choosing. They range from funky landmarks like the Big Chicken in Marietta, to art sites like the storytelling walls in Colquitt to the simply unique like the Day Butterfly Center in Callaway Gardens.

For the Augusta area, Schemmel picked Fat Man’s Forest, Woodrow Wilson’s boyhood home, the Butt Memorial Bridge, the mysterious burial place of George Washington’s dog, Hildebrant’s Deli and the Oliver Hardy Museum. Our area must be a classier place than its citizens admit, since travelers must go elsewhere to see the mummified dog or the bow tie spattered with blood when Mike Tyson tried to bite off Evander Holyfield’s ear.

Recently the shelves of libraries and bookstores have been filled with titles such as Georgia Off the Beaten Path, Fun With the Family in Georgia, Georgia Nature Weekends, Hidden Georgia and Mr. Cheap’s Atlanta. They all have equivalents for South Carolina and they all appeal to day-trippers and weekend travelers who want time for a leisurely exploration of the area near home. No one will stay up late reading Georgia Curiosities, but like eating peanuts, it is hard to read just one section.