Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil by John Berendt. ✔✔✔

This is a book I've wanted to read for a long time, and I don't even remember why! I know I've always been intrigued by the city of Savannah, Georgia: I see live oaks and huge mansions with lace curtains when I see the name of the city. However often I saw the book and remembered I wanted to read it, I would pass it by, knowing that the right time would come, and that time is now, because I'm hoping we can stop there on our way back to Canada in April.

While the book is framed around a murder, and the 10-year court case surrounding it, Savannah's colorful citizens are the stars of the show: the well-bred society ladies and their various social rituals, Chablis, the drag queen, Minerva the sorceress, the con artist- piano player who hosts tours of his homes in which he is merely a squatter, the young blacks dancing the minuet at the debutants ball, the redneck, fast-driving young man who ends up the murder victim, and the antique dealer whose four - yes, four- separate trials finally ended in his acquittal.

One of our Book Club themes two Christmases ago was "memoirs of a celebrity", and Helga chose the story of Chablis, whose story takes up one whole chapter in this book, so I must read that book, too.