Carter Barnwell, the protagonist in The Home Guard, is twelve years old when his world is turned on its head on November 7, 1861. As the Prologue states, “he knew best the streams and marshes of the Lowcountry. Winds and tides were as much a part of him as his fingerprints.” As with children in all wars, he is a victim of the inability of adults, those he loves and looks up to, to settle their differences peacefully. On the morning of November 7, 1861, he awakes in his bedroo

Remember a few blogs back when I talked about writers compulsively asking themselves, “What if . . .?” Beaufort’s Civil War history so engaged me that I became obsessed. “What if,” I asked myself, “one--no two--people stayed behind when all the whites fled? And what if one of them was an old woman, and the other a young boy, her grandson, only twelve years old? And what if they had to hunt and fish to stay alive? And suppose the Rebels recruited the boy to spy for them? And w

Last week, I blogged about my Aunt Sue, who spoke to me from the grave by way of her memoir, Three Houses, the preface for which expressed the hope that a nephew like me would find material for a novel in the history she had so beautifully preserved. It didn’t take me long to hone in on a number of passages I found helpful, but to explain how I was able to use them, I need to tell you about Beaufort. Beaufort, South Carolina lies midway between Charleston and Savannah. We mov

Last week I wrote about our move to Mexico in 1993, a move that promised to give me the time to write the next novel at hours later than 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. I should say a bit more about that decision. Why Mexico? The three most compelling reasons were culture, distance and dollars. As long as we were planning to be gone for a year with our two younger children, ages 14 and 13, we wanted a cultural experience that broadened the horizons of all four of us. Barbara and I felt the

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My writing life began with a short story I wrote in 1990 called The Dare on the Bridge. The bridge, in case you’re curious, is the Coleman Bridge that crosses the York River between Yorktown and Gloucester, Virginia. It is a non-fiction account of a day spent with my youngest son and four of his teammates on a youth soccer team called the Williamsburg Wizards. I’ll have more to say about that story in a future blog, but today I want to focus on the time at which it was writte

When was the last time you took a journey? A drive across country or a trip to Europe? Journeys can be measured in miles, but also in changes; a new job, adding to your family, or entering retirement after a long career. I am embarking on such a journey with the May 15, 2014 publication of my novel, A Southern Girl. Like every trip into the unknown, there are the butterflies of anticipation, anxieties about what could go wrong, and the knowledge that you are leaving the safe

As Easter approaches, I’m reminded of one of my mother’s most enduring gifts. Like most of her generation, she handed down to her grandchildren silver flatware, some furniture that would have impressed few on the Antiques Roadshow, and hug-infused unconditional love. Late in life, she took up ceramics, a soothing, stress-free hobby that produced Easter rabbits for each of my children. Each displays the grandchild’s name in her still-respectable print. Each contained a recepta

For a number of years, I've had the great pleasure of regularly lunching with Pat Conroy & Bernie Schein, two of my favorite writers and favorite humans. This week, my friend Scott Graber was kind enough to videotape part of the lunch so that I could share it with you. It was a wonderful afternoon, in which longtime friends gently poked fun at each other while sharing fantastic food and wine at one of our favorite restaurants, Griffin Market. Pat and Bernie are truly two of t