If you think Southern aristocrats are effete, gracious peace! You are in for a happy jollification when you meet Duchess (Grandma, Granny, Big Mama—all titles she deplored) Monette and her brother, Mr. Eleck Henri.
During the Depression of the 1930's, two Northern-reared children, twelve-year-old Izard and beautiful fifteen-year-old Julien, are orphaned in New York, forced to head South and move in with their grandmother. She lives in the Monette Mansion on Cutting Scrape Alley in Charleston, South Carolina.
Duchess Monette is an imposingly handsome widow. Her vigorous hobby is preserving the Southern heritage and other old things, including herself, and whether she's chaining herself to the Ashley Avenue Oak to prevent its wanton destruction by amateur traffic experts, or singing an off-key solo for the Organization to Perpetuate Artifacts and Negro Hymns, she's an electric force in the Holy City.
Mr. Eleck is a wonderful character, a bicycle-riding author, currently laboring on the History of Loblolly Plantation 1710-1865, in sixteen volumes. And it is with his assistance, while their grandmother is briefly out of town, that the children try to recoup the family fortunes.
Duchess' current project is to effect a WPA restoration of the ancient Foot Street Theater. She isn't too successful when she first leads a march on the White House, but her organization does get to sing Negro spirituals for Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and Fala. Harry Hopkins, however, remains elusive. Subsequently, though, Duchess meets one of Mr. Hopkins' assistants at Mr. Eleck's Tacky Party, and after that things fall into line as easy as kiss-your-hand.
A droll tale of the South with the lighthearted and warmly humorous Gilbreth flavor.
—from the dust jacket
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