Home in the Tall Marsh Grass

I have lived in Beaufort, SC, for sixty years and have read a number of books treating the lowcountry and its history, geography, people and cultures. Mr. Attaway's book is a very different creation from any of the others I have seen. For one thing, it is hands-down the best picture of early postwar Beaufort County I've ever read, relighting not only the style of life back then, but including physical descriptions of the creeks, mudflats and oyster banks, of the unpaved streets, and beautiful old homes, that are at once more loving and more accurate than any we are likely to see again. It speaks to a reality half a century gone, but sweet to remember; a time which, for whites at least, was so much more innocent, gentle and forgiving than today, and so much, much more authentic. Call me a fool, but I suspect that for older blacks that time seems even more halcyon than it does for me. Today's incomprehensible violence, false egalitarianism and the rest allow such a comment to be made without intending irony. I don't mean to suggest Tall Marsh Grass is at all focused on race; it is not. But that white/black divide came to my mind more than once in reading the book, and while in many ways we have moved to correct the racial injustices of our past, I believe we will not have moved far enough away from those wrongs until whites and blacks alike can write, read and enjoy remembrances like Mr. Attaway has produced here: focused, yes, on only one side of history, perhaps at times embarrassingly self-promoting, but not inaccurate, and yet generous toward the his subjects and the contexts in which we lived.

Kirkus gave the only negative review of this book. Why quote it? Are we in the business of selling books or not? See Barnes and Nobles' page for an excerpt from Publishers Weekly.