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Overview
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.Synopsis
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.
Publishers Weekly
Launching the American Places of the Heart series, Bresee writes eloquently about his early years (19201929) on James Island off Charleston, S.C. The author's father managed a dairy farm on the island where he brought his family from rural Pennsylvania to experience a very different life. The memoir dwells on rich boyhood adventures: crabbing in the river, exploring the woods, learning in a two-room school. Bresee impresses the reader with descriptions of the gracious customs observed by Southern gentry and, without passing judgments, he records his feelings on the plight of the area's desperately poor blacks, some of them former slaves. Most of the story, however, evokes great times in a lovely locale the Bresees were sad to leave when they returned North. Williams's delicate drawings expertly depict this ``place of the heart.'' (May)