Charming first volume in the new American Places of the Heart
series, with forthcoming volumes featuring memoirs about Dallas,
Chicago's North Shore, the Philadelphia Main Line, Kansas City,
Dedham (MA), and Oxford (GA). Sea Island Yankee is a memoir of a
childhood period spent on James Island across the James River from
Charleston, South Carolina. In 1921, Bresee's father, a
Pennsylvania dairy farmer, answered an ad placed by a St. John
Alison Lawtown, who was looking for a manager for his dairy
plantation on James Island. After long correspondence, Bresee went
South to look over the plantation, then sent for his wife and two
sons, Clyde and Kenneth. Eventually the Bresees spent 10 years on
the plantation, before returning to Pennsylvania. Much of the
memoir turns upon childhood pleasures, crises and vexations,
including helping Kenneth weather nearly a year lost to
tuberculosis. It is, in fact, tuberculosis which brings the
Bresees' stay on James Island to a climax. Father Bresee decides
that - as he has agreed with owner Lawton - the dairy herd must be
brought up to specifications for accreditation; when he tests the
herd he finds 21 cows tubercular. When these cows are slaughtered,
the lessened herd is and remains disease-free for the next two
years, but the dairy farm faces lean years. What's more, when
Father Bresee attempts to get a loan from a friendly northern
cousin to buy the plantation, a Wall Street disaster cuts off all
possibility of financing. Aside from school, the brothers had few
chores - the plantation's Negroes need every chore available - but
also no way to earn spending money without breaking down the
distance that had to be maintained between the races. This distance
broke down when the kids went fishing, crabbing or shrimping.
Charleston still lived in the afterglow of the landed aristocracy,
and this lends a fading sunset loveliness to many pages, as do the
deep friendships the Bresees make. The economics of the dairy
business and trying to boost the butter fat content of the dairy's
milk (so that there would be a deep cream line on the bottles) also
enrich the story. A very likable kickoff for what should be a
distinguished series. (Kirkus Reviews)
Clyde Bresee was just five years old in 1921 when his family moved
from a tiny Pennsylvania farm to the Lawton Plantation near
Charleston, South Carolina. While his father labored for the next
decade to revitalize the sprawling sea island plantation's dairy
operation, Clyde reveled in a world utterly foreign from the
community of his birth; he encountered a society of mannered
gentility, a climate in which winter passed in a twinkling of an
eye, a place of wandering tidal streams and vast expanses of salt
marshes, and a people - African-American people - he had never met.
In Sea Island Yankee, Bresee revisits the time and place that
endowed his childhood with great happiness and have held a powerful
grip on his adult musings. With the observant eyes of a youngster
and the distanced perspective of an outsider, Bresee re-creates his
boyhood world of water, live oaks, and Spanish moss. He recalls
Confederate memorial observances at which he heard white-haired
veterans recount Civil War battles, and he chronicles seemingly
endless opportunities for swimming, crabbing, boating, and
exploring. Bresee also pays tribute to the unforgettable African
Americans who shaped his sea island experience, from Jamsie, his
multi-talented playmate, to Ned, the indispensable plantation
employee who once saved the life of Clyde's brother. Enhanced by
charming illustrations, Bresee's beautifully crafted account
captures the adventures of a wondrous boyhood and the character of
a remarkable sea island community.
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