The Garden Club
by
Book Details
About the Book
Fate, I suppose, together with an unexpected phone call, led me to become the CEO of the Garden Club in Natchez, Mississippi, where I served for five years. This book was conceived and born out of my experiences in that position, and is woven from my imagination, coupled with first and second-hand accounts of many events which I have depicted, as well as my study of records and archives dating back prior to the Civil War. Natchez is famous for its mansions, and this book is about the people who inhabit those mansions, just as their ancestors did a hundred years ago. It is also about the beautiful but delicate balance of love and friendship which has evolved between black and white and which has survived in this tiny town from the days of master and slave. It is also the story of Rod Farshall, a young man who is caught up and swept into a terrifying series of events which will change his life forever, and it is my version of the happenings leading up to and encompassing the incineration of one of the greatest homes in the city, and how the resulting actions of the Garden Club set the stage for brutal and unconscionable retaliation from a prominent Natchez citizen. But more than all of the above, it is a story of how a few women conceived and developed The Sojourner Garden Club and then wielded its gavel to obtain their one and only goal, power.
About the Author
Robert B. DeBlieux is known to his friends as "Bobby." He is a native of Louisiana. Mr. DeBlieux received an MS degree from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and a BS degree from LSU in Baton Rouge. He currently resides in Natchitoches, his place of birth, and operates his ancestral home, The Tante Huppe House, as a bed and breakfast. During his spare time he writes historical treatises, serves on numerous state and local historical boards and committees, teaches Louisiana history, and is unsurpassed as a walking encyclopedia of Southern lore. He has written many articles about Louisiana, including two widely acclaimed tour guidebooks. He is a nationally known authority on Louisiana architecture, and is also an accomplished landscape painter. Mr. DeBlieux is a past president of the Natchitoches Historic Foundation and is currently co-chairman of the Cane River National Heritage Area Commission of the National Park Service. He is also a collector of historic documents, and as such has amassed the largest collection of documents regarding "free persons of color" ever assembled. During his tenure as Louisiana State Historic Preservation Officer, he created forty-two National Register Districts in the State of Louisiana. One can tour the South and visit every nook and cranny, but is not likely to encounter a more colorful or a more interesting character than Bobby. The Garden Club is his first work of fiction.