Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

by John Berendt

You mustn’t be taken in by the moonlight and magnolias. There’s more to Savannah than that. Things can get very murky.”

These, then, were the images in my mental gazetteer of Savannah: rum-drinking pirates, strong-willed women, courtly manners, eccentric behavior, gentle words, and lovely music. That and the beauty of the name itself: Savannah.

“But actually,” she said, “the whole of Savannah is an oasis. We are isolated. Gloriously isolated! We’re a little enclave on the coast—off by ourselves, surrounded by nothing but marshes and piney woods.

‘When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze and touches with her hand the summer trees….’

‘Like painted kites the days and nights went flying by. The world was new beneath a blue umbrella sky.’”

‘When you play songs, you can bring back people’s memories of when they fell in love. That’s where the power lies.’”

For me, Savannah’s resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.