In a Sweet Magnolia Time

These are facts: When Waties Waring left his wife of thirty years for a Yankee spit-fire he might as well have dropped a turd in a teacup. Local (Charleston, South Carolina) society banished him forever. He, in turn, became the first federal judge in U.S. history to rule that separate but equal is not equal, the hallmark of civil rights in America. Yet in Charleston the ruling only marked the start of another little war, reducing the historical ruling to an act of revenge. No footnotes survive the judge or his feud with his former society. He is remembered in polite circles there as vindictive and not as a heartfelt liberal. Robert Wintner's tale begins on the day Waties Waring is buried, the day on which Arthur Covingdale, an up-and-coming attorney, must come to terms with his own vengeful role as a stalwart of the Old South. Mr. Covingdale burned a cross at the judge's house and threw bricks through his windows back in' 52. His contrition at the judge's funeral in' 68 marks his first step out from town to the barrier sea islands, as he agrees to drive Jim Cohen home to the marshlands. This, in turn, starts him on a journey of redemption. Or maybe he's led there by the nose as Jim Cohen, with the patience of a fisherman, dangles his niece, recently single and returned from Guadeloupe, as bait. Jim Cohen and his niece derive from slave stock. The narrator, Covingdale, is a blueblood. Just as two rivers converge to form Charleston Harbor, so too the bloodlines flow from humble tributaries, from doilies and lace, mudflats and slavery, to their current mix. It is within that mix that Arthur Covingdale begins to see the contradictions in his life and discover what is of real value.Wintner, Robert is the author of 'In a Sweet Magnolia Time ' with ISBN 9781579621230 and ISBN 1579621236.