The Catbird Seat

Past meets present in South Carolina. At first, Gillian Culkin, a research librarian in Columbia, South Carolina, feels only mildly perturbed by the protestors outside her office, arguing over the presence of the Confederate flag waving boldly over the State House. As a White Southerner, she hadn't given much thought to racial issues. But after meeting local preacher and Black televangelist Reverend Joe Pearl, who shares bits of history unknown to Gil, she realizes the flag represents far deeper, more entrenched issues of race and inequality. Meanwhile, her job requires transcribing the 19th-century diary of a South Carolina slave owner named William Medlin. A farmer who's an expert on Southern agricultural details, Medlin himself becomes a slaveholder. As he recounts (and Gil transcribes) the tragic journey he undertakes with his newly acquired slave, Medlin's views of slavery change. At the same time, Gil finds her own views on race evolving. The two narratives-one told in the present, the other in the past-provide a probing and insightful look at what it means to be human within an often inhumane system, and what responsibility each of us has to one another.

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