Lessons from the Big House: One Family’s Passage Through the History of the South

Beginning in the South Carolina Low Country with his Huguenot ancestors who fled religious persecution in Europe, journalist-historian Frye Gaillard traces his family through the troubled, oppressive history of the South. Gaillard, who came of age during the civil rights years, shares the painful legacy of a family sometimes on the wrong side of that history. He writes of Capt. Peter Gaillard, who fought in the Revolutionary War (on both sides), and became a prosperous planter and slave-owner. The author follows the family story through the major events of Southern history-the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the civil rights revolution-to show how a family’s identity was forged by privilege, hardship, and loss, and also by a moral reckoning that emerged slowly, inevitably over time. A powerful memoir that is sure to speak to the heart of every Southerner. Researched with Dr. Nancy Gaillard, educator and wife of the author.