[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham has gotten better, now that we're into his rather complex personal life, not an expanded bibliography of his output....

This post has nothing to do with the book quoted, except that the name Somerset in the title brings to mind another non-fiction book I read years ago by Dorothy Spruill Redford entitled Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage (Amazon Kindle link here). It's about one woman's efforts to discover her heritage, and how it ultimately led to a very unusual family reunion that consisted of the descendants of the slaves and slave owners who populated the Somerset plantation (one of the largest plantations in the upper South). I've met the author, she's a wonderful lady, and I have a signed copy of her work in paperback (when living in Tidewater, she was a member the same Unitarian-Universalist church where I also hold a membership). She's currently the executive director of the Somerset Place State Historic Site in Creswell, North Carolina, where four generations of her enslaved ancestors lived and labored without pay.

I like to think Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been proud of her. Although it wasn't in Georgia, she orchestrated a moment in history where truly "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners" were "able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

The book is well-written and I highly recommend it. The Somerset Place historical site is located near Creswell, North Carolina. I've only been there once, but hope one day to return.