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The Doctor to the Dead
Confederate dead rising from their graves to aid General Lee, a captive mermaid that must be returned to the sea to keep the city from flooding, a man that refuses to accept the fact that he is no longer among the living, and a medical doctor that turns his back on the living to be a physician for the dead. These are just a few of the stories found within the pages of The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston
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Haunting Reads for Halloween!
It does not matter the time of year; one of my favorite things is sitting in a comfortable chair with a good spooky book, but reading them in October makes them much more mysterious. Below are five books from my library that you can enjoy during October!
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Goodbye To A River
In the Summer of 2013, I was a junior in college when I came across an obituary in the pages of Texas Monthly. A writer named John Graves had passed away. The author of the obituary heralded Mr. Graves as an elder statesman in the Texas literary world, and highlighted Mr. Graves’ book Goodbye to a River, a narrative detailing a canoe trip down the Brazos River, as the work that had put him on the map. The obituary ended as follows: “It’s an introduction long overdue: Mr. Hemingway, meet Mr. Graves.” Because I had recently completed my summer coursework and had a break before Fall classes…
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Under Kilimanjaro
This book is an account of Ernest Hemingway's safari with his fourth wife Mary in late 1953 and early 1954. This trip ended abruptly in January 1954 after they had two near-fatal plane crashes in East Africa. While back in Havana, Hemingway wrote his “African Book” and completed it in 1956. He left this manuscript, along with those for A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, and The Garden of Eden, in a safe deposit box in Cuba. Under Kilimanjaro is the last of Hemingway’s manuscripts to be published in its entirety. I enjoyed spending time with Papa while reading his “African Book.” I am about at the end of…
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Horn of the Hunter
Horn of the Hunter is one of my favorite pieces of safari literature by one of my favorite authors, Robert C. Ruark. This book tells of a safari that Ruark and his wife Virginia embarked upon in the early 1950s. They were guided by Harry Selby who began his career under the tutelage of the legendary hunter, Philip Percival, regarded by many as the Dean of African Hunters. Percival was part of Theodore Roosevelt’s famed 1909-1910 safari, as well as guiding for Baron Rothschild and Ernest Hemingway on African hunts.
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Teddy Roosevelt and The Montana “Incident”
In 1889 a book was published titled The Wilderness Hunter, written by future president and avid sportsman Theodore Roosevelt. It told of his life and sporting adventures in the American West some eighteen years before becoming president. In the the book one story stands out among the others and its one that you might not expect to find in a book written by a future president.
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Six Miles to Charleston
It was a cold February day in 1820 as Lavinia Fisher stood on the gallows outside the Old City Jail in Charleston, South Carolina, clad in her wedding dress. Lavinia and her husband John had been convicted of murder. A crowd gathered to watch America’s first female serial killer be hanged, but before the beautiful Lavinia dropped to her death, she had one last message for the people below...
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African Game Trails
By Brian Smith African Game Trails is written by Theodore Roosevelt and is an account of a safari he took with his son Kermit in East Africa starting out in March of 1909 sailing from New York and ending in Khartoum in March of 1910. The purpose of this expedition was to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, plants, and especially specimens of big game for The National Museum at Washington, the Smithsonian, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York. The game mounts from this expedition are on display to this day at these museums. The other members of the main party included Surgeon-Lieut. Col. Edgar A Mearns, U.S.A, retired;…
