Sea Island Yankee

Launching the American Places of the Heart series, Bresee writes eloquently about his early years (19201929) on James Island off Charleston, S.C. The author's father managed a dairy farm on the island where he brought his family from rural Pennsylvania to experience a very different life. The memoir dwells on rich boyhood adventures: crabbing in the river, exploring the woods, learning in a two-room school. Bresee impresses the reader with descriptions of the gracious customs observed by Southern gentry and, without passing judgments, he records his feelings on the plight of the area's desperately poor blacks, some of them former slaves. Most of the story, however, evokes great times in a lovely locale the Bresees were sad to leave when they returned North. Williams's delicate drawings expertly depict this ""place of the heart.'' (May)