Midnight within the Backyard of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story

Photographs rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion within the misty,early morning hours of Could 2, 1981.  Was it homicide or self-defense?  For practically a decade, the taking pictures and its aftermath reverberated all through this hauntingly stunning metropolis of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.  John Berendt’s sharply noticed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a totally engrossing novel, and but it’s a work of nonfiction.  Berendt skillfully interweaves a massively entertaining first-person account of life on this remoted remnant of the Previous South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark homicide case.

It’s a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of outstanding characters: the well-bred society women of the Married Lady’s Card Membership; the turbulent younger redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so highly effective it might kill each man, lady, and youngster in Savannah; the growing old and profane Southern belle who’s the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously humorous black drag queen; the acerbic and smug antiques vendor; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; younger blacks dancing the minuet on the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic within the graveyard at midnight.  These and different Savannahians act as a Greek refrain, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a city the place everybody is aware of everybody else.

Midnight within the Backyard of Good and Evil is a chic and seductive studying expertise.  Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously participating portrait of a most beguiling Southern metropolis has change into a contemporary basic.