CLASS Publishing is pleased to announce Jennie Holton Fant’s new collection of travelers’ observations with the release of The Regions of the Rice Planter: Historic Journeys around Georgetown and the Waccamaw River Regions, 1734-1875. Writer, editor, librarian Fant established her credibility as a charming traveling companion with prior books on Charleston (The Travelers’ Charleston (Accounts of Charleston and Lowcountry, South Carolina, 1666-1861) and Sojourns in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865-1947 (From the Ruins of War to the Rise of Tourism). Here, she turns her attention to the Waccamaw Neck and environs, making “the old, new again” with her dot-connecting footnoting technique and adding significantly to the area’s historical canon.
Georgetown County Library Director Dwight McInvaill (author of Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist) states that, “based on a carefully curated and thoroughly explicated collection entries from journals and other reminiscences … Fant skillfully illuminates for us the adventures and attitudes of a case of real characters as they surmount often dangerous difficulties to embrace new experiences in an exotic South Carolina Lowcountry. She brings to life vividly – and through their eyes – their treks across a distant world of enslaved Africans, powerful plantation potentates, self-righteous religious reformers, and brilliant botanists, along with various rascals of all types. The result is an exciting book which resonates long after one finally puts it down.”
Historian/author Susan Hoffer McMillan writes “Jennie Fant delivers a phenomenal treasure of time travel to marvel readers with the raw wilderness of Carolina’s 18th and 19th century ricelands. This book’s enriching footnotes complete its tapestry of Carolina’s beloved Waccamaw Neck area and nearby environs.” Her opinion is echoed by Lee G. Brockington, historian, author and former director of interpretation at Hobcaw Barony, in her assessment: “In Fant’s fine editing of rich resources, we discover how other people saw the Waccamaw Neck in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their observations on geography, food, nature, and especially, the women at Hagley during the Civil War, give natives and newcomers a distinct and valuable understanding of our Lowcountry plantation culture.”
CLASS, a Pawleys Island press with 50 titles to date in its publishing division, also hosts the Moveable Feast, now in its 26th year of introducing local, regional and national authors in literary luncheons at area eateries. Ms. Fant will be featured at the Moveable Feast on May 10, at Austin’s Ocean One, with an hour-long presentation, followed by lunch and a book signing. Following the feast, the author will adjourn to My Sister’s Books to sign books for those unable to attend the literary luncheon. If you would like to schedule a presentation by the author, contact jjenniefant@aol.com. To purchase books retail, My Sister’s Books, 13057 Ocean Hwy, Pawleys Island, SC, 843.235.9618 or www.MySistersBooks.com. To order CLASS books wholesale or to register for the Moveable Feast, call 843.235.9600 or www.ClassAtPawleys.com.