Book Review – Five Stars
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Too good to be true, but it is true! We first read this American classic 25 years ago, and we loved it!
The book has special meaning to us. In 1972, on our maiden voyage to Florida aboard our home designed and built dream boat Dursmirg, I had a disabling accident while passing through Thunderbolt, Georgia, a suburb of Savannah.
As I was dashed off to the hospital by the marine patrol, my wife, with the help of a fisherman. docked our boat in the raging ebb tide at the Savannah Yacht Club’s floating dock.
Long story short: The manager, Mr. Palmer, and his staff were all extremely friendly and helpful to us.
The reporter from the Savannah newspaper, Latham Davis, came to do a feature story of our adventuresome journey. He gave us a guided tour of Savannah complete with lots of history and tremendous suggestions of must see and do things such as eating places like Miss Wilke’s Boarding house and historical sights.
At the Savannah information center we were told: if you go to Macon they will ask you. “What’s y'all’s religion? If you go to Charleston they will ask you, “What’s y’all’s grand pappy’s name? When you come to Savannah they will ask you, What do y’all want to drink?
It became apparent that we were entering a world apart, like none other.
Over the years we revisited Savannah every chance we got. We still have life long friends there. A very good friend Bubba Schill some years later came to visit us and had this to say: “Bing” (my nick-name), “Before you die, you must go to Savannah, Georgia, for St. Patrick’s day! It’s an alcoholic's dream come true!”
Back to the book review:
Recently a good friend who owns the English language book store in Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico, mentioned that John Berendt, author of the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil had just visited her store, Between-the-Lines and signed her copy of the book. This rekindled our interest to reread the book. My wife can no longer read print books so she downloaded the audio book. We enjoyed the narration. We hadn’t laughed so hard in years. It was a superlative work of wit and writing! Even better than the paper edition.
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