From the Back Cover
Those among the 12 million annual visitors to the Myrtle Beach area who venture farther south on the coast are in for a treat_South Carolina's lovely sea islands begin just where the Grand Strand ends.
The Georgetown vicinity offers "elegantly shabby" Pawleys Island and the trio of North, South, and Cat Islands, home of the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center.
The islands off Charleston are rich in history: Sullivan's Island is where the pirate Stede Bonnet was captured; Fort Sumter was the site of the Civil War's opening battle; and Folly Beach was home to George Gershwin while he wrote Porgy and Bess.
The 65 islands near Beaufort range from Parris Island, synonymous with the United States Marines, to Hilton Head, the playground of presidents. Also in the area are St. Helena, where Martin Luther King, Jr., planned historic civil-rights marches, and Daufuskie, where Pat Conroy ran afoul of the county school board and launched a writing career.
The majority of the state's 1,000 sea islands are inaccessible, private, or too small for habitation. Chronicles of the South Carolina Sea Islands presents the best of the rest. Though readers will perceive a thread running from the storied cotton and rice plantations to the hunting preserves established after the Civil War, they will find that the islands are ultimately as different as upscale Kiawah and junglelike Pinckney.
