2002 News Archive

Troubled Dreams in the Low Country

The Low Country of South Carolina was a dark and dangerous place in the early days of the 20th Century. Survival was serious business—especially for womenfolk forced
to battle bravely against the age-old evils of poverty, ignorance, prejudice and parochialism so prevalent in the rural South in the days before the Great War.

But mere survival was not enough for Liza Marion Brown, the perky, precocious daughter of a hard-drinking bootlegger who dreams of a better life as a writer far beyond the murky swamps and scattered hamlets of the land between two rivers.
The story of Liza’s spirited struggle to break the bonds of stereotypical Southern womanhood is vividly portrayed in Naomi Williams’ breathtaking first novel, Two Rivers, Harbor House’s lead fiction title in September 2002.

“A masterful story from a new author,” raved noted South Carolina author Blanche Floyd. “The characters of Two Rivers come alive as Naomi Williams explores the way of life in a little known part of the world in the period before World War I.”

Viewed as a “modern masterpiece” by the editor's and publishers of Harbor House,
Two Rivers is the 2002 recipient of the Golden Eye Literary Award, named each year
in honor of literary great Carson McCullers.

“Two Rivers is one of the most important Southern novels to come along in a long time,” said publisher E. Randall Floyd. “This is storytelling at its best, an insightful, sometimes painful journey of a woman besieged by a rare passion for love and life
at a time when such emotions were strictly forbidden.”