![]() ![]() Today’s farmers, textile dyers and fabric artists in the region are championing indigo as a sustainable, regenerative alternative to modern-day, petroleum-based dyes. In recent years, as demand for housing on Johns Island has led to the excavation of previously fallow land, more of these brick vats are being uncovered, giving archaeologists and historians rare insight into the time when the state was a British colony. The crop helped fuel the state’s economy before the Civil War. Image by Caroline Gutman. United States, 2022.Īt Drayton Hall, a plantation in Charleston, enslaved people tended and processed indigo. Sullivan’s Island Beach in Charleston, where workers could have collected oyster shells, which are a source of lime, a mordant used to help the dye adhere to fabric. Image by Caroline Gutman. After the Revolutionary War, indigo processing fell into obscurity, relegated to the fringes of the agricultural conversation (if it was ever mentioned at all) as a historical oddity. At one time, the extracted pigment, dried and shaped into circular cakes, was so prized that it was sometimes called blue gold, and used as currency-even as barter for slaves. ![]() For 50 years, starting in the late 1740s, indigo was a major South Carolina cash crop, second only to rice. This crumbling vat, with squares aligned back to back, was built to process the plant when the demand for indigo dye was at its height. The ridges of the mortar in between the bricks emit a blue hue, the color of the ocean: indigo, a name that refers to the shrub, the dye the plant produces and the color itself. At its base, partially covered by moss and bald cypress roots, the tint that enchanted the colonial world is still visible. The remains of a four-chambered brick structure are set among black gum trees, live oaks and scrub brush. It’s just one of those books everyone should read.On Johns Island in South Carolina, tucked along Maybank Highway, not far from where the Stono River meets Pennys Creek, sits a long-obscured piece of history. Together, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they uncover the secret to the past of Lily’s mother’s after being taken in by Black beekeeping sisters. Set in South Carolina in 1964, Lily is a young girl with a blurry memory of the day her mother died and a stand-in mother in the form of a Black woman named Rosaleen. It’s a beautiful story of found family and so many other hot topics, including Civil Rights, and there’s even a bit of mystery and romance. ![]() One of my top three best books set in South CarolinaĮVERY year, The Secret Life of Bees is the most popular choice in my book club, The Rory Gilmore Book Club - and for good reason. New York Times bestseller of millions of copies I plan to add them here as I read them and can determine whether to officially recommend them.) (Note: I only included Queen Bee here because it’s my current favorite title of Frank’s, but I want to note that she has many other titles that are popular with readers. I created this list of books about South Carolina (including mostly fiction books about Charleston) based on my own personal research, my own personal reading, and by perusing Charlestonian bookstores and talking with the booksellers there, so it’s a pretty comprehensive list with something for everyone. But, if you do visit South Carolina, definitely at least browse them in the local bookstores - they are fantastic!) (Note: I decided not to include on this list of books set in South Carolina any nonfiction historical books, cookbooks, coffee table books, etc., as there are SO MANY, it’s kind of impossible to choose. This list of memoirs and fiction set in South Carolina truly will transport you there in time and place, even including Southern drawls and comfort food references, alongside difficult histories. ![]() (This list of memoir books and novels set in South Carolina actually reminds me of the best books set in New Orleans, a similar Southern city with an epic reading list that intimately reflects its uniqueness.) I am really excited to share this list with you, as I just returned from Charleston, and there I discovered just how tightly intertwined the culture and history of this particular location is with intertwined with literature, which definitely isn’t true of many, or even most, literary locations. reading challenge, these all make great book choices for South Carolina! (book display at Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston) Explore the best books set in South Carolina to find your next great memoir, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, or Southern gothic novel inspired by the Palmetto state in the Southeastern United States. ![]()
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