Thank you for your sponsorship
Dr. Eric Crawford and
Dr. Marlena Smalls
In Gullah Spirituals musicologist Eric Crawford traces Gullah Geechee songs from their beginnings in West Africa to their height as songs for social change and Black identity in the twentieth-century American South. While much has been done to study, preserve, and interpret Gullah culture in the Lowcountry and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia, some traditions like the shouting and rowing songs have been all but forgotten. This work, which focuses primarily on South Carolina's St. Helena Island, illuminates the remarkable history, survival, and influence of spirituals since the earliest recordings in the 1860s.
Dr. Marlena Smalls founded The Hallelujah Singers in 1990 to preserve the Gullah culture of the South Carolina Sea Islands. She is a sacred music vocalist, also singing gospel, contemporary, jazz and blues. Her programs for schools, reunion, and meeting groups incorporate lectures, music, and Gullah storytelling. Inducted into the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame in 2004, Marlena has performed for the Queen of England and many U. S. and international dignitaries. She has worked with film producer Joel Silver and Academy Award winners Tom Hanks, Demi Moore, and Glenn Close. In addition to many productions for PBS, SCETV, and GPTC, she is known to international audiences as Bubba's mom in the Academy Award-winning motion picture "Forrest Gump".
February 16 at 12 pm
Belfair Clubhouse, Bluffton, SC
Kristin Harmel
Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling, USA Today bestselling, and #1 international bestselling author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names, The Winemaker’s Wife, and a dozen other novels that have been translated into 29 languages and are sold all over the world.
Based partially on incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds and suffused with the kind of journey from the wilderness that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author.
After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.
March 23 at 12 pm
Belfair Clubhouse, Bluffton, SC
Melanie Benjamin
Melanie Benjamin is an author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling historical novels, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Aviator's Wife, and Mistress of the Ritz. Her latest novel, The Children's Blizzard, is a gripping tale of survival and forgiveness amidst a devastating, real-life blizzard that hit the Great Plains on the afternoon of January 12, 1888.
Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one who becomes a hero of the storm, and one who finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It's also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption.
At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents' choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.
April 6 at 12 pm
Country Club of Hilton Head, HHI, SC
John Hart
John Hart is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, The King Of Lies, Down River, The Last Child, Iron House, Redemption Road, and The Hush.
The only author in history to win the best novel Edgar Award for consecutive novels, John has also won the Barry Award, the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Award for Fiction, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, the Southern Book Prize, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in over seventy countries. A former defense attorney and stockbroker, John lives on a farm in Virginia, where he writes full-time.
Set in the South at the height of the Vietnam War, The Unwilling combines crime, suspense, and searing glimpses into the human mind and soul in New York Times bestselling author John Hart’s singular style.
This is crime fiction at its most raw, an exploration of family and the past, of prison and war and the indelible marks they leave.
April 19 at 12 pm
Belfair Clubhouse, Bluffton, SC
Mary Kay Andrews
Mary Kay Andrews is the New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels (including Hello, Summer; Sunset Beach; The High Tide Club; The Weekenders; Beach Town; Save the Date; Ladies’ Night; Christmas Bliss; Spring Fever; Summer Rental; The Fixer Upper; Deep Dish; Blue Christmas; Savannah Breeze; Hissy Fit; Little Bitty Lies; and Savannah Blues), and one cookbook, The Beach House Cookbook.
Stay tuned for the reveal of Mary Kay’s next novel! The release will be in late spring 2022.
May 3 at 12 pm
Belfair Clubhouse, Bluffton, SC