Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
A Savannah Story
A New York Times bestseller for a record 216 weeks — John Berendt's immersive portrait of Savannah, Georgia, woven around a real murder trial, eccentric locals, and the city's moss-hung, Gothic soul.
On the morning of May 2, 1981, shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated through this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.
John Berendt, then a columnist for Esquire, discovered Savannah in the early 1980s and spent the next eight years living there part-time. The result is a book that functions simultaneously as a travel memoir, a true crime account, and a gallery of unforgettable characters — the wealthy antiques dealer on trial for killing his young companion; the voodoo priestess Minerva who works her magic in the cemetery at midnight; the hilarious and irrepressible drag queen known as the Lady Chablis; the hapless recluse with a vial of poison strong enough to kill the entire city’s population; and dozens of other Savannahians who act as a Greek chorus on the proceedings.
Berendt’s prose is elegant, wicked, and deeply atmospheric. He captures Savannah as a place that operates by its own rules — insular, eccentric, steeped in history, and entirely itself. The New York Times called it “the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to call a travel agent.” It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Booke Prize and Lambda Literary Award.
Adapted into a 1997 Clint Eastwood film starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. Credited with transforming Savannah’s tourism industry — visits to the city nearly doubled in the two years following publication.
Thoughts from a Looper:
If you’re spending any time in Savannah — anchoring in the city or stopping at a marina — this is the book to have open. Berendt’s Savannah is the same Savannah you’ll walk through: Monterey Square, Bonaventure Cemetery, the grand mansions on Bull Street, the squares dappled with Spanish moss. He writes about specific streets and specific buildings with such intimacy that the city itself feels like a character, which it is.
The book is nonfiction, but it reads like the best kind of Southern Gothic novel — funny and sinister and deeply strange in equal measure. Savannah is the kind of city where people have very strong feelings about which party you attend at Christmas, and Berendt captures that insularity perfectly.
A note on the Lady Chablis: she appears as herself, plays herself in the film, and is one of the most memorable characters in American nonfiction. Worth the read for her alone.
The Bonaventure Cemetery featured in the book is also genuinely worth visiting if you have time ashore. The Bird Girl statue from the cover was moved there after tourist traffic threatened the original grave site — it’s now at the Telfair Museums in downtown Savannah.
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