Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt

This was an interesting book about the town of Savannah, Georgia and the people who live there. It describes the beauty and the history of Savannah as well as the people-white and black, rich and poor. Though it reads like a novel, it is actually a nonfiction book. There is a wide assortment of characters- society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; a recluse who has a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill everyone in Savannah; an aging and profane Southern belle; the extremely funny black drag queen; an arrogant antiques dealer; a sweet-talking, piano-playing con man; young blacks dancing at the black debutante ball; and a voodoo priestess who works magic in the graveyard at midnight (which the book gets its title from.) It describes these many people in great detail, leading right up to a murder, supposedly committed by one of the most respected men in Savannah. There is a movie of it as well. It also made me want to visit Savannah, even though I'm not generally interested in the south. I think that it's in the NOVA library. 4 1/2 stars.