Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
". . . a lyric account . . . wonderfully tells a story we must all learn."
- Michael Thomason, Lagniappe
Beginning in the Carolina Low Country with his Huguenot ancestors, the author traces his family through the South's troubled, oppressive history. Frye Gaillard, who came of age during the civil rights years, shares the painful legacy of a family sometimes on the wrong side of that history. He writes of a Gaillard who fought in the Revolutionary War (on both sides) and became a prosperous planter and slave-owner. Then he follows the family through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and civil rights-to show how identity was forged by privilege, hardship, and loss, and also by a moral reckoning that emerged slowly, inevitably over time. A powerful memoir that is sure to speak to the heart of every Southerner. Researched with his wife, the educator Nancy Gaillard.