Reviews
Praise for Waddie Welcome & The Beloved Community
“Waddie Welcome, Addie Reeves, and their friends are unexpected and fine teachers. This is a modern day parable from which we can all learn.”
— Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
“This is simply one of those great stories about how our lives are enriched when we expand our definition of ‘family’ and ‘loved ones.’ How interesting, how complicated, how sweet become the lives of those who risk themselves in this way.”
— Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing
“Waddie Welcome & The Beloved Community gives us all a chance to see what we can come to mean to one another. This book is not about civil rights, it is about doing the right thing.”
— John Lewis, United States Congressman and author of Walking With the Wind
“What happened in Savannah, Georgia, with Mr. Waddie Welcome as catalyst, is and should be happening everywhere. No one has to look far to repeat this story. Herein is the key to happiness.”
— Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home
Praise for In the Dark
“Both Tourists and Savannah residents will enjoy Susan Earl’s first novel. She presents a tapestry of colorful characters who interact in an engaging storyline. I would recommend this book to those interested in the side of Savannah not seen on a guided bus tour!”
“Great Tale of Savannah by Night — Real People on Real Streets: This book weaves together several story lines for interesting characters from different social strata in Savannah's intriguing downtown. I enjoyed how their lives intersected and how important they became to one another even though the intersections seemed casual and tangential at first. I liked the way the characters' best selves emerged after some traumatic events that could have had tragic outcomes. And how in the end their casual encounters formed the basis for making big differences in the directions their lives would head. You never know who can save the day.”
— Ben Goggins, Columnist, Savannah Morning News
“Susan Earl delivers a memorable ensemble piece set against the beautiful city of Savannah, GA. Her characters are woven into a lush and tightly-woven tapestry of rich and poor, young and old, love and loss. In the Dark offers authentic settings and realistic situations where secrets abound and hearts are mended. Highly recommended.”
— Kimberly Evans, Author of The Bell, Unrung
“In The Dark is set in Savannah and is Susan Earl's first novel. Because she incorporates many local landmarks, streets and businesses, those of us who live or have lived in Savannah can visualize exactly where the action takes place. The story revolves around six main characters, most of whose lives intersect with both good and not so good results. Most are young and are struggling to find themselves or to accept situations that aren't perfect. Susan does an excellent job of exploring their pitfalls and challenges. I enjoyed and recommend it.”
— Cynthia Heitger
Review: Susan Earl’s debut novel In the Dark explores a side of the city few see
JESSICA LEIGH LEBOS for Connect Savannah
25 OCT 2017
YOU WON'T find much of Savannah’s famous moss-draped, midnight-in-the-garden aesthetic in the pages of In the Dark, though much of the novel is set after dusk.
Instead, author Susan Earl explores parts of the city rarely included in the trolley tours and Top Ten Lists—the public housing neighborhoods, the affordable art studios, the dive bars and other world-weary spots that may be less than glamorous but comprise what life is like here for many.
Eagle-eyed readers will recognize the pinpoint descriptions of hand-painted signs on Waters Avenue and a certain coffee shop crowded on a Saturday morning after the farmers market as well as the characters themselves: The single mother with dreams of a dance career, the daughter trying to escape her strict traditional upbringing, the nurse with her own emergency at home, the businessman making bad choices, the disabled driver struggling to make a living, the artist wanting only peace and quiet. In the Dark turns around stereotypes about Savannah and its inhabitants, revealing a compassion and complexity that could never be distilled down to a guidebook.
With almost four decades of living in Savannah behind her, Earl brings intimate local knowledge to her first novel. A photographer and former caseworker at the historically significant Georgia Infirmary, she is also the co-author of Waddie Welcome and the Beloved Community, the revered non-fiction account of how a group of loving folks brought one special man home. When she isn’t writing, she spends time volunteering at the West Broad Y and Deep Center and marveling over the work of her daughter, photographer and Sulfur Studios co-founder Emily Earl.
Review: We Part to Meet Again by Susan Earl
RACHAEL FLORA for The Savannahian
18 JUL 2022
SUMMER is only heating up, so choose a book that brings the heat too.
We Part to Meet Again is local author Susan Earl’s third book and her first set outside Savannah. It tells the story of Josie, a free-spirited photographer from New York City who spends the summer of 1971 in western Massachusetts at Cummington Community of the Arts. She’s there to hone her craft, but she falls in love with one of her fellow campers, and a tangled love story follows.
Earl went to Cummington for a few years, and her love of the place inspired the story.
“There were so many interesting people there—writers and poets and musicians and composers and painters and sculptors, everything,” Earl remembers of her time there. “There were kids, too, because a lot of these artist places like Yaddo and MacDowell are not for families—you just go by yourself. But Cummington felt like the whole family should come.”
The community hosted notable artists like Willem de Kooning, Diane Arbus, Helen Frankenthaler and Marianne Moore.
Earl went to Cummington for four years, but by the time it was sold in 1993, she’d lost touch with the owners after attending a different artists’ community: Ossabaw Island, where she met her husband.
Eventually, when digital photography took over, Earl stopped photographing—it was hard for her to make the transition.
“For me, it was much more about the process of taking the photograph and all of the darkroom work, and it was hard to reimagine doing that,” says Earl.
At the same time, her daughter Emily was getting noticed as a photographer, and Earl was hesitant to take her spotlight.
“All of a sudden, I thought, ‘Well, I could write about photography,” she remembers.