In a Sweet Magnolia Time
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
In A Sweet Magnolia Time makes a major contribution to American history and American literature, for it explores the life and times and legacy of Waties Waring, the South Carolina federal judge whose epic opinion in Briggs v. Elliot that “separate but equal is not equal,” predated by two years of the 1954 Supreme Court Decision that came to the same conclusion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Judge J. Waties Waring (1880 1968) was a South Carolina federal judge in the old-school mode, until, sometime in the 1940s following an unseemly divorce and instant remarriage a slow progressive conversion took hold. First-time novelist and journalist Wintner looks mostly at the aftermath, not for Waring but for his prot g Arthur Covingdale. Covingdale was supposed to follow Waring to the federal bench, but after Waring's shift destroyed that career path, Covingdale helped burn a cross on Waring's lawn. Wintner's novel takes place mostly in the fractious 1960s, focusing on Covingdale's struggle to understand why he terrorized the judge, and how Covingdale himself fits into a social structure whose foundation is crumbling. Wintner, who lived in South Carolina, uses phonetic spellings to getting at its dialects, but the narrative's setup is flat and long-winded. Once Covingdale begins an intimate relationship with a woman of color, all of his inner turmoil is externalized and his demons and dilemmas leap out of the shadows. Wintner ends up nicely illuminating a corner of a turbulent era.
