Phil Morrison's Junebug (2005)

In a brief interview and question-and-answer session on the extra features disc of this DVD, Amy Adams – who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Ashley in Junebug – seems to see the film in terms of universals. Well, I'd give a tiny 'yes' to this but also a huge 'no'.

Yes: Junebug is about love, passion, tolerance, maturity/immaturity, jealousy, etc. But no: it's also much more about the division between the shiny, sophisticated world of big city Chicago as opposed to smalltown Bible Belt-strapped North Carolina. Even through the tolerance shown in it, it screams difference.

Chicago-based outsider art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) has been married to George (Alessandro Nivola), who grew up in North Carolina, for just six months. She views the near-necessity of meeting outsider artist David Walk (Frank Hoyt Taylor) from North Carolina as a fine opportunity to meet her in-laws (who live just thirty minutes away) for the first time. But there are multiple problems here that Madeleine does her very best to circumnavigate by using a superb mix of cool laconicism and a seemingly bottomless reservoir of warmth to tap into when the occasion demands it.

Mother-in-law Peg (Celia Weston) is difficult, and father-in-law Eugene (Scott Wilson) comes over as almost emotionless, but young brother-in-law Johnny (Ben McKenzie) seems hostile, although it's actually the usually silent Eugene who (to use an appropriate tool image) hits the nail on the head when he later tells Madeleine that Peg 'hides herself', and then adds that most people do, obviously not only including his wife and himself in this. We clearly see Johnny – far too emotionally immature to be married let alone to be a father – inexpertly trying to record a program involving meercats (his wife Ashley's favorite animal): this is his very undemonstrative attempt to show his love.

But it's the very pregnant Ashley who has loved Madeleine before meeting her, who gushes clumsily and fires inappropriate question after inappropriate question as Madeleine justs acts po-faced, who (dishonestly, but endearingly) takes the blame for smashing one of Peg's ornaments that Madeleine has in fact smashed, who all but screams out to Madeleine her need to be loved. She also politely cautions Madeleine that she's been addressing Peg by the wrong name, causing Madeleine to say 'Oh fuck!', and with this interjection it seems some more ice is broken between the two women.

When Madeleine mentions to Ashley and Peg that she's not good with her hands, Ashley replies that she doesn't need to be, as she's 'clever'. This of course is not so much an allusion to the geographical distance between Chicago and North Carolina as to the cultural gap between the social class of Madeleine and that of her in-laws. But whereas Ashley is dazzled by Madeleine's difference, the rest of the household feel alienated by her, in spite of all her kisses and hugs. In their way, they're just as prejudiced towards her as Walk is to towards Jews and the people he calls 'niggers'* – a fact that Madeleine, in her financial dealing with Walk, brushes away with a mixture of her normal tolerance and commercial expediency.

All four in-laws are something of a mess, although Ashley – the only one of the four unrelated by blood – is by far the most sympathetic one, the only one whose character the audence can really love. Eugene, as usual, keeps his mouth shut about the way he feels toward Madeleine, although his wife thinks she's gone too far by staying up late with Johnny, speaks of 'Chicago ways' and (hopelessly incorrectly) thinks there's something wrong with her marriage to George. Madeleine has in fact been trying to help Johnny (who has a bum job as a packer) with his education – but he's a guy full of self-hate, jealous of his college-educated brother, and he throws his Cliffs Notes copy of Huckleberry Finn on the floor with a couple of impotent cries of 'Fuck!'. He thinks that she thinks he's just a hick, that she's making fun of him, and he unnecessarily tells her she's no better than him. OK, he's culturally and sexually frustrated, but all the same, maybe Madeleine shouldn't have thrown in a word like 'picaresque' or expected him to have heard of Don Quixote.

This is a delightful – but affecting – film. One of my favorite moments is when George gets up to sing an old hymn a cappella, and is joined by others: Madeleine appears spellbound, or maybe gobsmacked is more accurate: here is George, on his old turf, leading a religious group. She smiles broadly and claps at the end, although her reaction obviously has nothing to do with God: she's just delighted to see a new dimension in him, to catch a glimpse of him as he was some time before she met him in his new environment.

Thomas Wolfe was born in North Carolina – not very far from where this film took place – and famously wrote a novel called You Can't Go Home Again, which could be taken as the main message of this film. As George starts off on the interstate on the long trip back, the last words (before Madeleine soothingly touches his hair) are 'I'm so fuckin' glad to be outta there'.

 

*Oddly, Walk paints slaves being freed but can only paint their faces white as he doesn't know any blacks.

Mary Alice Monroe: Sweetgrass / The Secrets We Keep (2005)

This is the English edition of Sweetgrass, retitled The Secrets We Keep. I'm not too sure why though: did the publishers think the word 'sweetgrass' would be unknown to English people, did they think it so obscure that they had to change it to something safer, more sellable? I suspect this is the case, although the effect is to take the flavor out of the whole thing because sweetgrass is not only a central theme of the book but it serves as one of the geographical anchors.

Like two of the books by Mary Alice Monroe that I've read before – The Beach House (2002) and Swimming Lessons (2007)* – Sweetgrass is an example of the Lowcountry subgenre of Southern literature, being set around Charleston. Because South Carolina is the 'palmetto state', references to that tree are almost mandatory, as are references to the devastation of the 1989 Hurricane Hugo, and of course references to sweetgrass and the traditional baskets made from this product. Whereas Monroe's two earlier books reveal a great deal of research into turtles and their plight, in Sweetgrass a major concern is in the craftwork that goes into that commodity, and its increasing scarcity due to housing development in the region.

The main story, though, is about the secrets alluded in the unfortunate English title. Preston Blakely is the husband of Mary June  – that double name obviously being an important Southern identifier – and they are the parents of their dead older son Hamlin, the younger Morgan who hasn't seen his parents for a number of years, and their daughter Nan, whose husband Hank seems bent on estranging her from her family history and therefore from herself.

Enter Morgan, back to the family after his father has suffered a serious stroke. Both Mary June and Preston have distanced themselves from him, although Mary June has in particular following the accidental death of Hamlin. But Morgan will soon more than redeem himself in their eyes (or at least in Preston's one functioning eye).

Crunch time comes when the rapacious Adele – Mary June's ex-friend and sister-in-law, and also Hank's employer – plots with Hank to make a financial killing out of selling the Blakely home, which is also called Sweetgrass, and is becoming an increasing economic burden to Mary June and Preston. While examining the legal niceties of Adele's intended takeover, Morgan chances upon love letters revealing that shortly before marrying Preston, Mary June had a brief love affair with Preston's older brother Tripp, which resulted in her carrying the future Hamlin in her womb: after the accidental death of Tripp she very quickly marries Preston.

Morgan discovers a legal escape route that reveals the extent of Adele's treachery, and together with this the chance discovery of a nearby forgotten slave cemetery (at the same location as a secret sweetgrass patch) neatly put an end to Adele's intended acquisition of the house. In this way, both the property and the sweetgrass themes are woven together.

The good guys win in the end, OK, and maybe there's a bit too much plot in the mix to hold together completely convincingly, but on the plus side no attempt is made to tie everything in a neat bow, although I was mighty pleased to see that Hank got Nan's feminist hackles up far enough for her to ditch her slimy husband.

* I've also read Time Is a River (2008) although, unusually for Monroe, that novel is set in the Appalachians around Asheville, North Carolina.

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Mary Alice Monroe and The Isle of Palms, South Carolina

Karen White: The Memory of Water (2008)

Karen White's The Memory of Water is an example of the Lowcountry sub-genre of Southern Literature, is set in South Carolina, and is told by four narrators:

Diana, a gifted painter with bipolar disorder who has lost much of her creativity under a fog of prescribed drugs.

Marnie, Diana's sister who teaches children with special needs in Arizona, who returns to South Carolina for an indetermined period.

Quinn, Diana's ex-husband who has invited Marnie over.

Gil, Diana and Quinn's nine-year-old son, who has recently gone dumb.

Diana and Marnie were in a boat accident a number of years before, in which their mother, another mentally ill person, apparently died. Marnie has little memory of the events, although there's obviously a huge communication problem between the sisters, who haven't seen each other for ten years.

Recently there has been another boat accident, and although both Diana and Gil have survived, they are evidently very disturbed by the ordeal and Quinn hopes that Marnie can help Gil recover from the trauma.

The fear of water and the curative power of (and often indirect communication by) art are central motifs in this often perceptive – even beautifully written – but ultimately unsatisfying novel that seems to begin in the right places but ends unbelievably: an absorbing psychological mystery turns into Southern Gothic with a denouement that drowns in its own contrivances.

Sue Monk Kidd: The Mermaid Chair (2005)

Sue Monk Kidd was in her fifties by the time her first novel The Secret Life of Bees (2002) was published, but her second - The Mermaid Chair - reads like a far more mature work.

Kidd was born in Sylvester, Georgia, although she now lives near Charleston, South Carolina, and The Mermaid Chair occupies a place in  the Low Country sub-genre of Southern literature. Although set almost entirely on the fictional barrier island of Egret, on which stands a fictional monastery, Kidd had Bull Island in mind, and the Mermaid Chair in its chapel is based on the Mermaid Chair in the parish church of St Senara, Zennor, Cornwall, England.*

Zennor of course was where D. H. Lawrence and his German wife Frieda fruitlessly sought refuge from the zenophobia of the time in 1915 (and where Katherine Mansfield and Middleton Murry briefly joined them), and it no doubt didn't escape Kidd's attention that D. H. Lawrence's most famous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover is partly about adultery. In The Mermaid Chair, Jessie Sullivan's adultery with Brother (Doubting) Thomas (or Whit in, er, real life) is central to the story, and the intense emotional and sexual development the couple experience (and their love nest surely owing something to Mellors's hut in Lady Chatterley?) is a major part of the their individual development as separate, more fully rounded people.

This intelligent novel of challenges to spiritual,  sexual and familial life, although very popular, does not deserve to be restricted to the chicklit ghetto to which some people (quite possibly unintentionally) might seek to confine it.

*The legend is that a mermaid living in nearby Pendour Cove fell in love with Matthew Trewhella, who sang the closing hymn in the church every night. She took to visiting the church in a dress, he took one look at her and fell in love too, carried her to the cove and disappeared into the sea with her. The Mermaid Chair has two wooden bench ends, one of which is carved with a mermaid holding a comb and mirror.

Pat Conroy: South of Broad (2009)

There have been fifteen years between Pat Conroy's Beach Music (1995) and his latest novel, South of Broad (2009). This is the first of his books that I've read, and the title in itself is intriguing. Googling won't do much good, and in fact will probably even confuse, as there's a rather odd online description of the expression by a writer who has obviously gotten the wrong end of the stick. 'South of Broad' is an expression used to describe where the Charlestonian aristocracy live - and also their mindset, as the same writer would have known if she'd given enough attention to the novel. And as the protagonist's father says: 'South of Broad is a conspiracy of platelets, son: blood and breeding are all that matter there. No, that's not true: there's got to be a truck full of money somewhere near the blood bank.' Yes indeed: 'South of Broad' is an expression Conroy uses to describe a very small but very wealthy area on the Charleston peninsula, South Carolina, namely that from Broad Street down to the Battery, where the peninsula joins the Atlantic.

And the protagonist is one Leopold Bloom King, named after the protagonist in James Joyce's Ulysses, on which his mother, Dr Lindsay King, wrote her thesis. The book also begins on Bloomsday: 16 June (but 1969, as opposed to Joyce's 1904), a tremendously important day when Leo sets free two orphans handcuffed to a chair (surely some Beckett in there?), learns his mother was a nun some time before, and after having no friends at all, makes a number of them who will be remarkably significant and faithful to the end of the book. And the book's final word is 'Yes', which is the final word in Ulysses, the final word spoken by Molly, Ulysses's wife, who has the same forename as the woman whom Leo has loved throughout South of Broad.

And it's a long book, containing more than 500 pages. Is it worth reading? Conroy has stated that his earlier novel, The Great Santini (1976), had its beginning in asking why he (Conroy) wanted to kill his father, and The Prince of Tides (1986) its beginning in asking why Conroy's eldest sister was sent mad by their parents, but South of Broad doesn't appear to begin with any question, and seems to be based on parts of characters the author has known.

South of Broad involves incest and other parental abuses, murder and other violence, suicides and various forms of madness, the terrors of Hurricane Hugo, etc, and on the surface doesn't look too good as literary fiction: parts of the novel are overwritten, there are too many coincidences, characters are sometimes unbelievable:  maybe this is just popular fiction masquerading as literary fiction?

No, not at all, and in many ways this is a brilliant novel that attempts to emphasize the similarities - as opposed to the differences - between black and white, rich and poor, and various social classes in general. But Pat Conroy is not a major author, and I don't think he'd ever pretend to be, although he is still very underrated as a serious novelist.

Larkin's Toads re-re-re-Visited as Horses (but only Briefly), Aiken, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #22

Aiken is very much about horses, and fiberglass models are liberally sprinkled about the town as are the bears in Cherokee, North Carolina, and the Larkin toads in Hull, England. I didn't attack the subject with the same gusto, though, as James Mathewes Legare and the Pickens-Salley House were my main concerns. Also, a passerby informed us that a number of the horses had been bought, so it would have been impossible to photograph them all. Consequently, I just took images of those I spotted - there isn't a great deal else to do on Sundays in Aiken!

Magnolia Mare.

Steed Freedom.

Horse of a Different Color.

Palmetto/American Equine.

Patriotism.

Unfortunately, I missed the name of this one .

These two horses are very different from the others, of course, and probably come from a different generation. And they don't appear to have a name.

Lucy Holcombe Pickens and the Pickens-Salley House, Aiken, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #21

This historical marker, in the grounds of the University of South Carolina Aiken campus just in front of the Pickens-Salley House, says it all.

'This plantation house, first known as “Edgewood,” is an excellent example of Federal-era architecture. Originally near Edgefield, it was built in 1828 for Francis W. Pickens (1807–1869), state representative and senator, congressman, U.S. Minister to Russia, and governor 1860–62 during the secession crisis and the first two years of the Civil War. Lucy Holcombe Pickens was an ardent Confederate and novelist.'

'In 1929 Eulalie Chafee Salley (1883–1975), pioneer woman suffragist, real estate broker, and developer, saved the house. Salley, architect Willis Irvin (1891–1950), and contractor Byron E. Hair supervised its dismantling, relocation to the Kalmia Hill area of Aiken, and restoration. It was moved here in 1989 when developer Ronny Bolton donated it to the University of South Carolina Aiken.'

 

 

 

 

My related post below is also worth a visit:

 

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Elizabeth Boatwright Coker's India Allan (1953)

James Mathewes Legare and Aiken, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #20

James Mathewes Legare (1823-59) wrote poetry and fiction, as well as being a painter and an inventor. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, where he initially studied law. In 1846, his ailing father was forced to move the family to Aiken, which then was a kind of convalescent town. Legare wrote poetry and fiction in Aiken, along with doing some teaching, and he married in 1850. His poetry collection Orta-Undis, and other poems (Boston : W.D. Ticknor & Co.) was published under the name J. M. Legaré (the middle name recorded as Matthews on the Library of Congress site). He died of tuberculosis at the age of 35, and his novel Cap-and-Bells was published posthumously in Harper's Magazine (1863-64).

His house is at 421 Laurens St SW.

Legare built an extension to the house to facilitate his writing.

The garden.

Legare is buried in St Thaddeus's Church, Aiken.

Catherine Ladd in Winnsboro and Salem Crossroads, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #19

Catherine Stratton Ladd (1809-99) was born in Richmond, Virginia, and married the painter George Williamson Livermore Ladd at the age of 19. Soon after marrying, she began contributing various poems and essays to Southern periodicals under such pseudonyms as Minnie Mayflower, Arcturus, Alida, and Morna. She also wrote plays, at least one of which was performed.

The Cathcart-Ketchin House is at 231 South Congress Street, Winnsboro, which has a population of a little over 3500, although (this being the States) it of course seems much bigger.

One side of the historical marker reads:

'Cathcart-Ketchin House

'Richard Cathcart purchased this lot from John McMaster in 1829, and it is thought he built the present federal-style house shortly thereafter. The house has had a number of owners including Priscilla Ketchin, who purchased it in 1874. The building was deeded to Fairfield County in 1969 by Ella Cathcart Wilburn and Carrie Cathcart Owings and was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.'

The reverse side reads:

'Catharine Ladd

'Born in Virginia in 1810, playwright, poet, and educator, Catharine Stratton Ladd married George Ladd, an artist who had studied with Samuel F. B. Morse. The Ladds owned this house from 1852 until 1862. Mrs. Ladd was principal of the Winnsboro Female Institute and during the War Between the States was president of the Fairfield District Ladies' Relief Association. She died 1899 and is buried at Salem Presbyterian Church. Erected by Fairfield County Historical Society 1979.'

And the house is now Fairfield County Historical Museum. What the historical marker isn't clear about is that it was in this building where the Ladds ran the girls' school. Enrollment was at 100 when the school had to close because of the Civil War, or what the South seems to prefer to call 'the War Between the States'.

Cathcart-Ketchin House from the rear.

The third - and top - floor.

The entrance hall on the first (or ground) floor.

Catherine Ladd was proficient in needlework, a subject taught by her. This sampler is an example of the kind of needlework produced at the school.

The label reads:

'Watercolor theorem paintings
'Fashionable 'formula' painting was taught to the girls in Mrs. Ladd's classes. Fairfield County Museum Collection.'

Penny and I thank the Director of the museum, Pelham Lyles, very much for showing us around the museum and pointing out several things for us. I'm also grateful to Pelham for sending me a link to the Rev. Charles Woodmason's journal, of which more in another post.

I was initially confused about Catherine Ladd's grave, as a 'Find a Grave' enthusiast has listed this at the Presbyterian Cemetery in Winnsboro, when it is actually at the Presbyterian Cemetery in Salem Crossroads.

A closer view of the inscription reveals that the final 'E' is missing from Ladd's forename.

Ridgeway, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: A Brief Non-Literary Break

Ridgeway, at the time of the 2000 census, had a population of just 328. It has a number of interesting buildings, and the most interesting for us was this former police station, which was in operation between 1940 and 1990. The present police station is just a few yards to the left of the photo, which explains the presence of the police car.

Mary Alice Monroe and The Isle of Palms, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #17

Mary Alice Munroe's novels form part of what can be described as a sub-genre of literature of the South – Lowcountry literature, of which the two novels above are examples: The Beach House (2002), and its sequel Swimming Lessons (2007). Both books are set in Isle of Palms, which is slightly to the north-east of Sullivan's Island and about ten miles from Charleston.

The books abound in references to the geography of the area, and the weather is always a concern: the Lowcountry has not forgotten the destruction wrought by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and toward the end of The Beach House there is a hurricane from which the characters escape. While we were in the Appalachians and moving toward the east, there was a strong concern that we would be prevented from going because of Hurricane Earl. As it happened, though, people moved out of Nantucket way up in Massachusetts, and people were battening down the hatches in the barrier islands of North Carolina in the Kill Devil Hills area, but Earl moved further into the Atlantic, so it was safe for us to move in.

Throughout The Beach House and Swimming Lessons, turtles are used as a metaphor for the behavior of humans: the protection and preservation of turtles are a major concern even before the books begins – there's a quotation from Thoreau regarding them, plus a dedication to the Isle of Palms/Sullivan's Island Turtle Team, to which Mary Alice Monroe (and the two book's protagonists) belong.

Another writer of this subgenre is Dorothea Benton Frank, who writes novels she calls 'Lowcountry Tales', and which have such titles as Isle of Palms (2004), Pawley's Island (2005), Bulls Island (2008), and Return To Sullivans Island (2009). Frank's books seem to be designed for a much more popular market: they're all (I think) in the first person, and tend to be very chatty, much more colloquial, more dialog-driven, with frequent exlamation marks, and with the use of 'you',  the narrator appears to be speaking directly to the reader.

The Ravenel Bridge, or to give it its full title, the Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge, which is named after a (Republican) Charleston politician and also called the New Cooper Bridge after the Cooper River it goes over, stretches from downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant. It is 471 meters long, was built in 2005, and it is quite an experience to drive. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Mary Alice Monroe's Swimming Lessons mentions the protagonist Toy Sooner 'zoom[ing] over the gleaming new Ravenel Bridge'.

The Beach House and Swimming Lessons have a character called Brett, a naturalist who runs an eco-tours business, which is obviously an important activity here.

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Mary Alice Monroe: Sweetgrass / The Secrets We Keep (2005)

William Gilmore Simms and Charleston, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #16

William Gilmore Simms (1806-70) was a poet, novelist, and biographer of the antebellum period, and as such it almost goes without saying that his writing was pro-slavery, and therefore anti-Tom. Several of his books are online, amongst which are:

The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina (1844),

The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845),

The Life of Francis Marion (1846), and

Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia (1882).

Simms was born in Charleston and his bust stands in White Point Gardens, The Battery, looking away from the Atlantic Ocean.

Simms began his professonal life as a lawyer, but soon gave it up to write. He was a popular writer, and received praise from Edgar Allan Poe, but the War Between the States destroyed him financially and spiritually. Although his works are now largely forgotten, a William Gilmore Simms Society exists.

The base of this memorial a few hundred yards from Simms's bust is blank, apart from the handwritten message: 'This memorial is dedicated to all those smart enough to live and die for themselves and not for oppresive [sic] fascist governments.' The anarchist symbol under this message suggests that the writer was referring to all governments.

Karen White and Folly Beach, South Carolina: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #15

This novel is another example of the Lowcountry sub-genre of Southern literature, and as such is peppered with names of places in the area, and around Folly Island in particular, where it is almost exclusively set. It alternates between the years of the Second World War and the present, is much concerned with bottle trees, romantic manuscript research, and Nazi spies off the coast of the barrier islands of the Carolinas.

Folly Island is about a twenty-minute drive from Charleston, and the picturesque Morris Island lighthouse is in Charleston Harbor, at the north-eastern extremity of the island. It features prominently in On Folly Island. A leaflet written by Jim Booth, of Save the Light, Inc., reveals that the lighthouse's foundations are damaged and calls for donations. Years of beach erosion worsened the situation when jetties were built at Charleston.

The first lighthouse was built on Morris island in 1767, another one was built in 1838, and work on the present one, which stands at 158 feet, was begun in 1872. In 1962 it was decommissioned and replaced by a new one at Sullivan's Island. Save the Light, Inc. bought Morris Island lighthouse in 1999, although the State of South Carolina now has title to it and leases it to the organization for fundraising, etc.

Typical beach houses on Folly Island.

Elizabeth Boatwright Coker: India Allan (1953), and a Few Digressions

India Allen, by Elizabeth Boatwright Coker (1909–93), is interesting in itself: the novel begins in antebellum South Carolina among the aristocracy, continues through the crisis of the Civil War (1861–65), and concludes during Reconstruction, when the Southern aristocracy is attempting to cope with its loss of wealth, Northern carpetbaggers, and the new status of the slaves upon whom they once depended for that wealth. This forms an important backcloth to the love story between India and Max Allen, who marry quite early in the novel. This is a love which endures, despite terrible injuries the war inflicts on Max, and in spite of his subsequent amnesia which partly causes their eight-year separation, when Max escapes to the Appalachians to trade with the mountain women.

But of additional interest to me, and I know to others, are the minor characters representing Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832–99) and her husband Francis Wilkinson Pickens (1807–69). Lucy was well known for her beauty, and is remembered now as the only woman to appear on a CSA (Confederate States of America) banknote.

India meets Max in White Sulphur Springs (the marriage mart), Virginia, where Lucy met Francis, although most of India Allan is set in Edgefield, South Carolina, where the Pickens lived in a house with an interesting history. Bought by Francis – who had been married twice before – in 1829 and called Edgewood, the house remained in Lucy's possession until her death.*

And then in 1929, by which time Edgewood was in a state of some disrepair, Eulalie Chafee Salley (1883–1975) and her husband bought the house. Eulalie was a feminist and one of the first female real estate agents; she lived in Kalmia Hill, Aiken, and had the house moved there. In 1989, The Pickens-Salley House was moved to the University of South Carolina campus, Aiken, where it remains. This is a professionally produced, nine-minute video history of The Pickens-Salley House.

*Lucy Holcombe Pickens published the novel The Free Flag of Cuba in 1855, but that's another story.

My related post below is also worth a visit:

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Lucy Holcombe Pickens and the Pickens-Salley House