The Catbird Seat

Past meets present in South Carolina

At first, Gillian Culkin feels only mildly inconvenienced by crowds of demonstrators debating the presence of the Confederate flag flying brazenly atop the South Carolina State House. Gil passes these people every day as she makes her way to work in the Caroliniana Library on the University of South Carolina campus. Like so many other White Southerners, she had never before given much thought to racial issues. But over the course of a few weeks, she comes to realize that the flag represents important and entrenched issues of race and inequality. Gil finds her views on race developing and evolving as she examines the past and sees its influence on the present.

Meanwhile, at the Caroliniana, she studies the 1857 diary of a South Carolina dirt farmer named William Medlin. Hollingsworth makes him the center of a second story. Thinking to turn a quick profit, Medlin buys a slave at auction. In the course of the tragic journey, he then undertakes with his newly acquired slave, Medlin’s views of enslavement change.

The two narratives―one told in the present, the other in the past, in alternating chapters―provide a probing and insightful look at what it means to be human within an often inhumane system

About The Author:
Rebecca Hollingsworth was raised in rural Florida, which she says was every bit as backward as any place in the Deep South. With a degree in graphic design from the University of Florida, she moved to New York City in 1968 to work in advertising. After several years, she turned South again, this time to Atlanta, her home for the next 35 years. Growing restless after 15 years in advertising and design, she started a service business in Atlanta, which she ran successfully for 20 years until a nationwide company purchased it, allowing her to retire at age 50.