Overview

Beginning in the South Carolina Low Country with his Huguenot ancestors who fled religious persecution in Europe, journalist-historian Frye Gaillard traces his family through the troubled, oppressive history of the South. Gaillard, who came of age during the civil rights years, shares the painful legacy of a family sometimes on the wrong side of that history. He writes of Capt. Peter Gaillard, who fought in the Revolutionary War (on both sides), and became a prosperous planter and slave-owner. The author follows the family story through the major events of Southern history—the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the civil rights revolution—to show how a family’s identity was forged by privilege, hardship, and loss, and also by a moral reckoning that emerged slowly, inevitably over time. A powerful memoir that is sure to speak to the heart of every Southerner. Researched with Dr. Nancy Gaillard, educator and wife of the author.

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9781588384553

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Reviews

A story everyone who whines about family values should be compelled to write--and one that those who truly cherish those values should exult in reading.--Will Campbell author of Brother to a Dragonfly However private its intent, this all too brief footnote to Southern history is for all of us, for to read it is to fare the challenge of a personal retrospective through the forgotten thickets and byways of our history. The cobwebs brushed away in the process may leave us with clearer vision of who we are and why...--C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Avenue, Clayton City Just as his 100-year-old grandfather gave it to him long ago, Frye Gaillard now passes on to us a priceless gift: the universal story of an American family's odyssey through time and place. It is truly our story, for we have all been on this journey--but seldom have we been fortunate enough to have a scribe like Gaillard to tell us how and why it happened and what it all meant.--John Egerton author of Generations Lessons from the Big House is an affectionate yet thoroughly honest account of a family whose history is woven into the fabric of the South. Frye Gaillard is a superb storyteller. No other writer I know understands better the special joy and burden of being Southern, nor tells of it with such grace and eloquence.--Robert Inman author of Home Fires Burning

Lessons from the Big House is an affectionate yet thoroughly honest account of a family whose history is woven into the fabric of the South. Frye Gaillard is a superb storyteller. No other writer I know understands better the special joy and burden of being Southern, nor tells of it with such grace and eloquence. -- Robert Inman, author of Home Fires Burning A story everyone who whines about family values should be compelled to write--and one that those who truly cherish those values should exult in reading. -- Will Campbell, author of Brother to a Dragonfly However private its intent, this all too brief footnote to Southern history is for all of us, for to read it is to fare the challenge of a personal retrospective through the forgotten thickets and byways of our history. The cobwebs brushed away in the process may leave us with clearer vision of who we are and why... -- C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Avenue, Clayton City Just as his 100-year-old grandfather gave it to him long ago, Frye Gaillard now passes on to us a priceless gift: the universal story of an American family's odyssey through time and place. It is truly our story, for we have all been on this journey--but seldom have we been fortunate enough to have a scribe like Gaillard to tell us how and why it happened and what it all meant. -- John Egerton, author of Generations

Author Information

Frye Gaillard is the writer-in-residence in the English and history departments at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of twenty books, including With Music and Justice for All: Some Southerners and Their Passions; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, winner of the Gustavus Myers Award; and If I Were a Carpenter, the first independent, book-length study of Habitat for Humanity.

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