2014 Ella Dickey Literacy Award Winner for A Rare Titanic Family
From Betsi Yvette via Facebook:
"I finished reading A Rare Titanic Family. It’s an absolute treasure, so moving that I cried in the end.❤️ Thank you, Julie Hedgepeth Williams!"
Click the radio to hear the terrific podcast about the Caldwells on the Titanic:
All
New!
Little Newspapers on the Prairie: The Frontier Press Career
of Carrie Ingalls
Julie Hedgepeth Williams,
author and speaker
Click the cover of my new booklet, Little Newspapers on the Prairie, to find out about Carrie Ingalls' career in the press.
Books by Julie Hedgepeth Williams
I'm a historian who loves true stories. They're so much stranger (and more fascinating) than fiction! And yet I think that all true stories should be written with the breezy storytelling qualities of fiction, of course while staying true to history.
I know you'll enjoy my books. I truly enjoyed writing them. Here's a brief synopsis of each one. All are published by NewSouth Books. Click here to order from NewSouth. You may also order my books from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and your local bookstore.
Three Not-So-Ordinary Joes
A Plantation Newspaperman, a Printer's Devil, an English Wit,
and the Founding of Southern Literature
DUE OUT IN JUNE, 2018!
Joseph Addison "J.A." Turner, a plantation owner during the U.S. Civil War, wanted nothing more than to start Southern literature. As he said, the Confederate States of America couldn't be a great country if all it did was fight. It needed literature! And he, J.A. Turner himself, would start Southern literature. He had tried everything - a magazine, a journal, a how-to book, poems, plays, satires - and nothing had worked out. He was disgruntled to have to go back to the plantation, his Plan B. But then he had an idea: He owned a plantation. Why not put up an outbuilding, buy a press, and start his own newspaper right there? Thus was born The Countryman, the only newspaper ever published on a plantation. Turner openly borrowed the format and philosophy of The Countryman from the Joe for which he was named, Joseph Addison, the British journalist of the early 18th century. And at last Turner had a hit! But the South lost the war, and Turner died a few years later, thinking he had failed to start Southern literature. BUT...
Turner's printer's devil on The Countryman had been the third Joe, a teenager named Joel Chandler Harris. Harris eventually published the Uncle Remus stories, the first wildly popular Southern literature. He got the stories from his time on Turner's plantation, when he and the Turner children would go listen to slaves tell fantastical animal tales. Thus, J.A. Turner really did father Southern literature after all.
A Rare Titanic Family
The Caldwells' Story of Survival
My great-uncle Albert Caldwell survived the Titanic, along with his wife, Sylvia, and 10-month-old baby, Alden. They were one of the few families aboard the ship to survive intact, making them a rare Titanic family. Albert, or "Uncle Al," as I called him, was 26 at the time and lived to be 91, and I knew him well. I heard the story from him firsthand dozens of times: How he and Sylvia decided to leave their jobs as Presbyterian missionaries in Siam because the tropical heat didn't agree with Sylvia; how they nearly took the Carpathia home from Naples; how they spotted an advertising placard for the Titanic and decided to take that ship instead; how they nearly didn't get a ticket, because second class was sold out. Then there were his stories of the ship itself: the wonderful electric elevator, the tables "piled high with all the luxuries and delicacies one could ever want," the church service on the night of April 14 featuring a sermon entitled "For Those in Peril on the Sea." Then came the dramatic collision with the iceberg, the agonizing decision to get off or not, and the guardian angel of a stoker who talked the Caldwells into getting off on Lifeboat 13. And oh, how grateful they were to be added to the Carpathia's passenger list after all when she came to the rescue of the Titanic's survivors! ... Despite knowing the story as well as my own name, I was astonished what I DIDN'T know as I researched for the book. Uncle Al never told us that he and Sylvia were fleeing their jobs, with their boss in pursuit. In fact, when they got off the rescue ship Carpathia in New York, the boss's agent was waiting for them ....
A Rare Titanic Family won the 2014 Ella Dickey Literacy Award for books that preserve history. I shared the award that year with former First Lady Laura Bush.
Wings of Opportunity
The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama
What? Weren't the Wright Brothers from Ohio? True, they were. Yet the famous brothers were in Alabama, too. In 1910, they were building airplanes for wealthy sportsmen to buy -- airplanes were considered a sport then, and pilots were athletes. But you just can't take an airplane out of the box and start throwing it around like a football. You have to learn to take off and land and other key skills. The Wright Brothers realized they needed to train and then hire young men to teach their sportsmen customers how to fly a plane. It was far too cold in Dayton that winter to open a flying school, so they turned to the South and found welcome arms in Montgomery, Alabama. The city was primed to capitalize on the fame of having an airplane in town - such was front page news all over the nation, and there was only one other "aeroplane" legally in the air in the United States at the time. Montgomery was anxious to publicize the fact that it was way past the Civil War and was looking to the future. Unfortunately, no one told Wilbur and Orville that they were to be publicists for Montgomery, and the clash between the Wrights and their adoring fans in Alabama was often amusing. In the end, the Wrights left a deep mark on the state and on civil aviation, as the Wright Brothers, who held key patents on flight, gave aviation to the civilian public in Montgomery, and their students flew the world's first night flights there.