Event Location
Avid Bookshop presents Lillah Lawson for her book, Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree. This event will take place on Thursday, September 26, 2019, from 6:30-7:30 pm at our Prince Avenue location and is free and open to the public. We encourage you to purchase a copy of the book to get it signed by the author!
You can purchase this event book online from Avid Bookshop here
ABOUT THE BOOK:
It's an unusually warm autumn, 1929, and O.T. Lawrence is about as content as a cotton farmer can be in Five Forks, Georgia. Nothing—not poverty, drought, or even the boll weevil—can spoil the idyllic life he shares with his doting wife and children and his beloved twin brother Walt. Until illness and Black Tuesday take everything O.T. ever held dear in one fell swoop. Grieving, drinking, and careening toward homelessness, O.T. is on the brink of ending it all when he receives an odd letter from a teenage acquaintance, the enigmatic Sivvy Hargrove, who is locked away in Milledgeville’s asylum for the insane. Traveling through desperate antebellum towns, O.T. and his daughter Ginny are determined to find Sivvy and discover her story.
Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree is a love story to Georgia and the spirit of its people—a story of family, unconditional love, poverty, injustice, and finding the strength inside to keep on going when all is lost.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lillah Lawson lives in North Georgia, not far from Five Forks, with her husband and son, a silly dog, and two slightly evil cats. When she’s not writing, you can find her baking, playing bass, marathoning 1980s sitcoms, or riding her bike. She is currently working on another historical fiction novel, set in the late 1960s.
PRAISE FROM OUR STAFF:
"Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree reads like a low country boil with spice and warm flavor. It is a love letter to the resilient people of Georgia. O.T. Lawrence's life is far from perfect because drought and the boll weevil have brought his loving family to the brink of starvation, but he is doing better than many in Five Forks, Georgia. Then sickness and the stock market crash take his cotton farm, his loving wife and his twin brother. In the darkness of grief and white lightening, he receives a letter from Sivvy Hargrove. Sivvy has been locked away in Milledgeville asylum after years of abuse. In an attempt to help Sivvy, O.T. and his daughter Ginny set out on a trip that takes them into the mountains and south across Georgia. I loved this book because my grandparent's Georgia was woven together with the Georgia with which I am familiar." - Ellen
