Our Fathers' Fields A Southern Story

When University of Georgia English professor James Everett Kibler undertook the restoration of a dilapidated plantation home in his native Newberry County, South Carolina, a sudden storm dislodged an antique pen from its resting place behind the home's mantel. Kibler interpreted the event as a sign. He expertly weaves an engaging and many-faceted history for readers. As restoration work becomes personal journey, he slowly unearths the remarkable saga of the Hardy family, giving words to their silence, their Southern land, and the people who lived on it."This 200-year history of a South Carolina plantation family--seen from the inside, so to speak, in letters and ledgers and the comments of descendants--brings us home to who we are by showing us where we came from. Kibler has researched and presented an overall account that resonates for all of us in the very core of our being." --Shelby Foote"A superb book. It is nothing short of a tour de force. . . . It is charmingly written, astoundingly rich in detail, and absolutely fascinating reading. It reminds me, at various times, of Ben Robertson's Red Hills and Cotton, W. A. Percy's Lanterns on the Levee, some of James McBride Dabbs' autobiographical works, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and the best (that is to say, the least polemical) essays in I'll Take My Stand. I enjoyed it immensely." --Fred HobsonKibler, James E. is the author of 'Our Fathers' Fields A Southern Story' with ISBN 9781589801387 and ISBN 1589801385.