Most Popular Books by Hamilton Basso

Set among the wealthy of Aiken, South Carolina--The Cary Collection bookdealer.

"This is Hamilton Basso''s best book, in my opinion. It has something of the quality of Stribling''s Unfinished Cathedral with more vitality, better orientation, infinitely more polish of style....The story of a South Carolinian town, prejudice-ridden, and nourishing itself on the old game of gossip. Against this setting we see the third of a line of rebels against tradition, in his particular fight for the underdog, the victim of circumstances and pettiness and intolerance -- and we see him defeated, in outer seeming, as were his father and grandfather before him. It is an interesting book, for out of little things the big significance takes being. It is a less glamorous book than one has come to expect from Hamilton Basso -- and for that reason, perhaps, a truer, bigger book."--Kirkus

Influential family of Pompey''s Head during the critical years of the Secession and the fall of the South.

My reason for writing this book is a very simple one. I wanted, as far as I was able, to capture the feeling of a time and the spirit of a man...a man I believe to have been one of the very considerable figures of the Civil War. I claim for him no enormous greatness. He had, however, his moments of real genius and he has not been given his just due. -- Prologue.

The secret life of a famous novelist and her effect on two young people in love.

"Que font les peuples avec les lieux qu''ils habitent ? Cette question est aussi lointaine que les peuples et les lieux eux-mêmes ; aussi lointaine que l''attachement des êtres humains envers certains endroits de la planète ; aussi lointaine, peut-être, que la notion de foyer - "notre terre" par opposition à "la leur". Dans l''époque turbulente qui est la nôtre, marquée par le déracinement des populations et l''ampleur des diasporas, il devient de plus en plus difficile de se raccrocher à des lieux, de prendre pleinement conscience de ce qu''ils ont à nous offrir, et je crains que cela soit considéré partout comme un privilège et un don dans les années à venir. Les Indiens d''Amérique, qui furent les premiers à peupler ce continent et les premiers à en être chassés, ne le comprennent déjà que trop bien. Puissions-nous apprendre de leur expérience."

How Cape Hatteras earned its evil notoriety as a graveyard of the Atlantic -- and how it looked to a speculative novelist on tour.