Savannah's little crooked houses reveal the secrets they have held for over two hundred years in this new book. With a warm, accessible style, Savannah writer Susan B. Johnson gives voice to the walls of the little antebellum cottages that dot the city's historic district and examines the lives of the families that called them home. Who built these tiny dwellings? Who lived in their twelve hundred (or fewer) square feet of space? And what sort of world did they see when they gazed out their windows? This charming, meticulously researched book answers all these questions-and more. Who can resist the story of Dr. Samuel Furman, who was married to sisters, first Lucy and then Henrietta Williams? Or the sad tale of Edward and Jane Harden, who both died of bilious fever in 1804-he on her birthday, she on his-leaving their children in the care of slaves? Or the mystery of lively and conniving Eliza Howell, whose three husbands all died under the same circumstances? If these walls could talk, the rooms would resonate with the passionate spirit of our ancestors.
Susan B. Johnson is a novelist, playwright, journalist, and historian.
After winning second place in a national playwright's competition, her play Finders Weepers was published (Stagedoor Press, 1993) and has been performed in theaters across the country. A second play, Another Man's Shoes, won honorable mention in Ohio State University's 2002 Eileen Hackert Playwriting Competition.
For three years she wrote "Washed Up," a weekly column for the Pulitzer Prize winning Georgia Gazette, and for four years she wrote "The Grammar Game," a weekly column she created for the Savannah Morning News.
Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications--most recently in Warren Adler Short Story Contest Winners (Stonehouse Press, 2010).
Both her novel, Spirit Willing: A Savannah Haunting (Bonaventture Books) and her non-fiction work, Savannah's Little Crooked Houses: If These Walls Could Talk (History Press) were published in 2007. As a result, she was nominated for 2007 Georgia Author of the Year.
In 2008 she was nominated for 2007 Georgia Author of the Year.
