Carolina Gold (41 page)
The cultivation of Carolina Gold is no longer a viable enterprise. Without adequate numbers of reliable workers and without the tools, equipment, and livestock that were stolen from us during the war, we can no longer continue the tradition that lasted for generations. The planter class is no more.
Lumber is the new hope for many in the Lowcountry, and I am happy to say that my business formed last year is flourishing. Fairhaven, my ancestral home, has been converted into a school employing two teachers for the education of twenty-six pupils.
Please forgive the brevity of this letter. I write in haste, for I leave tomorrow for a brief lecture tour before returning for Christmas preparations.
With all good wishes for the season and the new year, I remain,
Very truly yours,
Charlotte Fraser
Betancourt
D
ear Readers,
On my first visit to the beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry fifteen years ago, I discovered a book called
A Woman Rice Planter
, by Elizabeth Allston Pringle. Written under the pseudonym Patience Pennington, the book is a collection of pieces Mrs. Pringle wrote for the
New York Sun
in the years after the Civil War. The daughter of Robert F. W. Allston, a former South Carolina governor, Mrs. Pringle, who by that time was a widow, describes her difficulties in keeping workers, her changed relationships with her father’s former slaves, the devastation of her crops from the storms she called “freshets,” the decline in the price of rice that eventually led to the extinction of the rice culture. I fell in love with Elizabeth and with her story.
In the summer of 2012, I boarded a small motorboat in Georgetown in the company of my husband and Captain Rod Singleton, a native of the area and a student of Mrs. Pringle’s life and work. We headed up the Sampit River to the Pee Dee and her family’s rice plantation, Chicora Wood. My first glimpse of it,
glimmering white in the shade of ancient hardwood trees, brought tears to my eyes. Standing in the small boat, snapping away with my camera, I felt completely connected to Elizabeth. I could almost see her standing on the piazza, looking out toward the sea and worrying about an approaching storm. It was a moment I won’t ever forget.
From Chicora Wood we headed to the Waccamaw River, where more than thirty rice plantations once produced millions of pounds of the superior strain of rice called Carolina Gold. For purposes of my story, I chose to set the novel at a fictional plantation on the Waccamaw. “Fairhaven” is modeled after Chicora Wood, though, and the difficulties my characters experience in the novel are inspired by the real-life experiences of planters on both rivers in the postbellum years. I adhered to the historical record whenever possible, but in a few instances I invented situations such as Mr. Peabody’s use of the Litchfield chapel, and I placed ferry landings and causeways where they were necessary to tell my story.
A word about the name “Allston.” Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I have spelled it with one
l
and with two. That’s because the two branches of the family spelled the name differently. Governor Allston and his family used the double
l
, but William Alston, who is briefly mentioned in the story, used only one.
And a word about yellow fever. During the nineteenth century, yellow-fever outbreaks plagued America’s port cities every summer. Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Mobile, Memphis, and others braced each year for the scourge. Families who could afford to leave for the summer went to the beach, to New England, or to Saratoga, New York. As one of the Allstons wrote, “to remain in the country during the summer would be Suicide.”
In 1868, the year this story takes place, New Orleans escaped the worst of the fever, recording only a few cases. During the previous summer, however, thousands of people were affected.
Though I bent the timeline a bit, the conditions, treatments, and other details of a yellow-fever outbreak are taken from the historical record, as are the details regarding the Confederate generals—Beauregard, Longstreet, Hood, and Early—who moved to New Orleans after the war.
Pawley’s Island, where my character Charlotte spends the summer, was the traditional summer home of several of the Lowcountry planters, including the Allstons. They moved their entire households—furnishings, kitchen equipment, and even livestock—from their plantations to the beach in order to escape the “country fever.” There they stayed until the “black frost,” a heavy frost that killed the mosquitoes and made it safe to return home.
Mrs. Pringle was born near the family home on Pawley’s Island on May 29, 1845. After the war she returned to Chicora Wood and remained there until her death on December 5, 1921. Her obituary noted that she died “at the scene of her life’s labors in the beautiful home overlooking the river, quietly and peacefully” and that her passing would be “read with sorrow by hundreds who had been entertained and strengthened by her published works . . . and had come to look upon her as almost belonging to their circle of friends.”
After spending so many years researching and writing the novel she inspired, I feel the same way.
San Antonio
February 25, 2013
1. Early in the novel, Nicholas suggests to Charlotte that poverty can be the cornerstone of their friendship. In what ways does shared hardship affect relationships? How did hardship affect their relationship?
2. What was your initial impression of Charlotte? Of Nicholas? How did your impressions of them change over the course of the novel?
3. How did the war change the roles of Southern women? How were these changes shown in the story?
4. Charlotte and Mrs. Hadley take different approaches to dealing with their circumstances. Which do you think is more helpful? Why?
5. What are some of the difficulties Charlotte faces in dealing with her father’s former bondsmen?
6. Charlotte muses that Southerners had no idea that Reconstruction would be a tragedy all its own. What are
some of those tragedies portrayed in the novel? How do the characters deal with them?
7. Charlotte learns that her father was a different man than she had thought him to be. How did this discovery change her? Have you ever had a similar experience?
8. If you had to choose one word to describe Charlotte, Nicholas, Daniel, Trim, and Tamar, which words would you choose and why?
9. This novel takes place at the beginning of freedom for former slaves. What difficulties did they face and how did they attempt to deal with them?
10. The title of the novel refers to the exceptional strain of rice produced in the South Carolina Lowcountry prior to the war. What other meanings does Carolina Gold hold for the story?
T
his book is truly a team effort. I have many people to thank, beginning with my extraordinary team at HarperCollins/Thomas Nelson and my new publisher, Daisy Hutton. Thank you, Daisy, for your grace, care, and wisdom. My editorial team, Ami McConnell, Natalie Hanemann, Amanda Bostic, and Becky Monds, sat around the conference table in Nashville and asked the right questions about this story. My new primary editor on this book, Becky Philpott, provided insights and thoughtful commentary and the book is better as a result. It’s so much fun working with you all.
I’m lucky to work with the world’s most meticulous line editor, for whom no detail is too small to warrant scrutiny. Thank you, Anne Christian Buchanan, for your sense of story and your remarkably keen eye.
Kristen Vasgaard, thank you for yet another amazing book cover.
Books would not get anywhere without a marketing and publicity team and a great sales staff. Thank you, Katie Bond
and Ruthie Dean, for your creativity and enthusiasm and for your willingness to listen to my wild and crazy ideas. Thanks, too, to our talented sales people who represent my books in the various channels.
A great group of people at Nelson work behind the scenes to make things run smoothly and I thank them: Jodi Hughes (a.k.a. my elf), Kerri Potts, and Laura Dickerson.
Thank you to my wise and caring agent, Natasha Kern.
Captain Rod Singleton of Georgetown, South Carolina, spent a day with me on the storied Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers and contributed his encyclopedic knowledge of the Carolina rice trade and of Mrs. Pringle’s life and work. Thank you, Captain Rod.
Maryjo Fairchild at the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston answered my questions about the photo of Mrs. Pringle as a young woman that graces this book and assisted in obtaining it for use here.
Jonathan Sanchez at Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, the staff at Indigo Books on Kiawah Island, and the volunteers at the Georgetown Historical Society helped in locating books and other valuable research materials.
Reader Karen Carver of North Carolina suggested the name “Cinnamon” for Charlotte’s little mare, and it fits perfectly. Thank you, Karen.
As always, I’m grateful to my family and friends and my writing community, especially my BFF, Leanna Ellis. Your encouragement keeps me focused when the words are flowing . . . and when they aren’t. I love you all.
