Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree: A Fairhope Memoir

by Mary Lois Timbes

Fairhope, Alabama, is a small city harboring more than one paradox. On one hand, it is a unique little town just a dot on the map which was founded by a group of nineteenth-century idealists who were certain that they could change the world. On the other, it is a prosperous, elegant, and sophisticated community with an aggregate of expensive shops and upscale homes. Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree opens the curtain on a very different Fairhope. It reveals the town in a simpler day, mid-twentieth-century, when eccentrics lived cheek by jowl with intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens. Over a hundred years after its founding as a Single Tax Utopia, Fairhope s appeal has not diminished, although its mission has been clouded by conflict and time itself. This book, conceived as an instrument of renewal of the town s original spirit, includes letters between the author and Robert E. Bell, whose 1959 novel The Butterfly Tree was set in Fairhope, and includes essays, character sketches, and anecdotes by both authors. The combined memories reveal an extraordinary past in a very special place

135 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2001

About the author

Mary Lois Timbes Adshead has lived in New York City and Geneva, Switzerland, Fairhope, Alabama,Hoboken, New Jersey and now resides in Kingston, New York.

Born in Mobile, she was raised in nearby Fairhope, a unique community founded in 1894 as a utopian colony to demonstrate the efficacy of Henry George's economic theory of the single tax. She graduated from the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education and went to college with the dream of becoming an actress. She studied acting in New York with Peggy Feury and Lee Strasberg and worked as a journalist and in public relations before marrying Jim Adshead and moving to Geneva where she founded an American community theater.

Returning to Fairhope, she worked at the Marietta Johnson Museum and did research on local history.

She is the author of the nonfiction books THE FAIR HOPE OF HEAVEN, MEET ME AT THE BUTTERFLY TREE, and the eBook THAT WAS TOMORROW, a historical novel. Her books are based on the rich lore of Fairhope and the characters she learned of and remembers from her life there.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this exchange of letters and a few essays on the lived Fairhope, Alabama experience between the 1930s and 1950s. Though from different generations, Timbes and Bell share similar sensibilities about their unique personal, natural, and spiritual Fairhope experiences. Even after a second read (9 years apart), it left me wanting more, so more it shall be as I read "The Fairhope of Heaven" for the first time. Timbes: “True education is organic, part of the human condition, and its measure is not taken by test scores. Its measure is taken by the life we live.”
I’m glad to know their stories, and I think about them when I walk or ride my bike around these same streets and sidewalks. Occasionally, I can even see their sweet faces at the beach or on campus.