Buckhead author turns her passion for the past into a new work of fiction.
During COVID, Buckhead resident Carolyn Curry wrote her first murder mystery. Sudden Death drew on her adventures as the wife of former NFL star and coach Bill Curry, and was a departure from her first biographical book, Suffer and Grow Strong: The Life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas.
“When Bill was in football, he got death threats,” Curry says. “I took a lot of the experiences we had and made it my Agatha Christie of football.”
But after the book’s debut in 2022, Curry was back to her favorite topic: telling stories anchored in history and the strong women who made it. Trudy’s Awakening, published this month, combines the two in a tale based around the real-life Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, the daughter and wife of wealthy Augusta planters whose detailed diaries offered a glimpse into life in Georgia before, during and after the Civil War.
“In returning to my first love– women’s history—I decided I’d take Gertrude and make her a character,” says Curry, 82, an Agnes Scott alum who earned a Ph.D. in history from Georgia State. “I have a ton of material on her; I knew how she’d talk and feel.”
The book’s other characters are compilations of women connected to Thomas that Curry embellished. “I created lives and relationships that all come together in 1899 Atlanta as Trudy is telling a woman artist her story of survival and coming back from adversity, all while having her portrait painted.”
Women coping with difficulties and finding ways to survive are favorite themes for Curry, who in 2002 launched the nonprofit Women Alone Together to connect women on their own with a support network. For this book, the difficulties are surviving the Civil War. “
Trudy talks about growing up in an affluent family but goes from great wealth to poverty after the war,” Curry says. “But I was also intrigued with how the slaves survived after emancipation. I know from Gertrude’s diary that they were asked to stay on, and owners promised to pay them, but few could afford to. Trudy’s companion, Amanda, leaves in the night, gets to Savannah and makes a go of it.”
Even the story’s portrait painter has obstacles to overcome. “She’s based on a 26-year-old artist who painted a portrait of Gertrude,” Curry says. “I found from census figures she was the breadwinner for her mother, sister and her sister’s baby, and was making a career as an artist when women weren’t supposed to have careers.”
Intertwined with those anecdotes are historical facts Curry says even she didn’t know. “I’m a historian, but I was shocked when I realized how few rights women had. They couldn’t own property, couldn’t sue, didn’t have rights to their kids. I love to write about women who were supposed to be silent, seen but not heard, and were not remembered.”
Curry also learned that putting those stories into an historical work like her first book wasn’t the best way to reach the next generation of readers.
“I realized my granddaughters weren’t interested in reading a book with 500 footnotes,” she said. “So when my publisher encouraged me to write a novel, I started thinking about Gertrude as a character. I never dreamed I’d write it, and it floated around in my head for several years. But I really enjoyed it, especially when I realized in fiction, you can make things up!”
CAROLYN CURRY
carolyncurry.com
@drcarolyncurry
