Reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt took me back to Savannah. It was an enjoyable nonfiction book that was meant to read like a novel; I thought it read like excellent journalism.
The book was well edited, but I did spot one word choice issue I think would have been better off corrected. In a chapter about a cotillion for college-age Black women, Berendt writes, “The debutante, escorted by her father, walked to a small platform, mounted the steps, turned toward the audience, and curtsied.” The problem with that sentence is that the young women are officially escorted on this night by college-age men, not by their fathers. Two sentences later, Berendt writes, “Then her escort approached from the other side, took her hand, and led her down from the platform as the announcer read his name and those of his parents, his school, and his major.” Two more sentences in the same paragraph refer to the young men as the “escorts”: “One by one, the debutantes and their escorts were introduced in this manner.” and “The escorts were dressed in black tie, wing collar, tailcoats, and white gloves.”
It would have been better to say “accompanied by her father” in that first sentence I quoted, so as not to confuse the issue of who was doing the escorting.