The Laurens County Public Library will play host to a free, public event May 18 that promises to be an interested and unusual program, with a Clinton connection.
The topic of the program, which will run from 6 to 7 p.m., is local native Rebecca Browder’s recent, posthumous publication, “Sorry Men in Southern Literature: 21 Original Short Stories.”
Former Alabama Congressman Glen Browder, a Presbyterian College alumnus and native of Sumter, will speak on behalf of his late wife, the former Becky Moore of Laurens and Clinton.
“Sorry Men” is a work of creative non-fiction based on real people whom the late writer met, interviewed, or studied over the years, with about half of those tales situated in Laurens County and South Carolina. This event should be especially interesting to readers of southern literature, fans of southern history, and anyone whose families worked in the textile mills or lived in the mill villages of Laurens County.
Rebecca Browder grew up in a family of millworkers in the Watts and Lydia Mill villages, and she went on to enjoy an exciting and accomplished life. As her biographical burb on the back cover states, she had “the uncanny gift of seeing people’s true nature, which she brandishes beautifully in a collection of short stories about sorry men, foolish women, and lost children.”
One prominent reviewer has written that “there is a rich vein of hilarious Southern gothic stories, written with a wicked sense of humor reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor, about scheming men and women, flirting dangerously with their criminal selves.” Another viewer said: “God-fearing and mean duke it out in these darkly humorous stores about life in the South, where existence is so raw, you can literally see the hand of fate reach into it and deliver its own surprises.”
