The Memoirs of Sara Harvey
by Shauna Austin Grice
Category: Fiction

Main character Sara Hughes Harvey is an 84 year old firecracker of a grandma with a knack for tellin´ it like it is... In this unforgettable narrative, Mama Harvey paints a vivid picture of her life as a little black girl in the rural South during the nineteen-thirties. Sara´s compelling account of the suspicion and hatred that ensues in her back-woods town when the only child of a prominent white family is found murdered makes The Memoirs of Sara Harvey the must-read of the decade and impossible to put down. Send email correspondence to Sgrice@southernco.com. SEE THE SARA HARVEY EXCERPT BELOW Growin' old is a funny thing. If you haven't gotten there already, you'll soon understand what I mean. The oddest things put a spark in your brain and drag you down memory lane whether you want to go there or not. You start talking about the things you remember, and halfway through your story, some disrespectful young pup, reminds you that you've already told the story before. I have a story to tell that I've probably told fifty times. No, better make that a hundred times. No matter how many times I repeat it, I'm not usually interrupted. People listen when I tell it because it's a fantastic story. It's not so fantastic because I embellish it, because believe you me some things need embellishing and some things don't. This story is so wonderful because it's one of those that don't. I suppose it's well received because it's the truth. As I was growing up, my mama used to say, "Truth is the truth today, it was truth yesterday, and it's sure to be the truth tomorrow. Believin' it or not believin' it don't do a thing to change that." I do believe Mama was right on the money. For me, it's not the telling that's so delightful. It's the fact that no matter what you believe when I'm done telling the story, there is no force on earth that can change the fact that it did happen. Now, I suppose I should begin by telling you my name. I'm known around these parts as Ms. Sara. Most people know who I am because I've lived here all my life. I was born in the spring of 1919 and what happened all those years ago still sends chills up my spine and makes me wonder how we ever got through it. Now, back in those days, there was a miserable-looking woman who reeked of stale liquor and lived in back of what used to be old man Gresham's sawmill. She was certainly a pitiful-looking soul with eyes as red as blood and loosely worn flesh that made one think of rumpled sheets after a hard night's rest. Adding to her mysteriousness was the fact that she walked with great difficulty, dragging that left foot as though it were a small child throwing a tantrum, not wanting to go where the rest of the body went. As I remember it, she was somewhat of a vagabond, who consistently adorned herself in tattered dresses with faded floral prints that looked as though they may have been beautiful at one time or another. There was nothing necessarily strange about that, until you got down to her feet and found them stuffed into thick black combat boots with the laces untied. And how can I tell this story well without mentioning that coat, a heavy winter overthrow, which she rarely took off, even in the dead of summer. Even odder still, was the fact that this woman was often known to carry on a conversation with two or three invisible friends, all of whom seemed to say the funniest things that sent her twisting into hysterical laughter whenever anyone walked by and stared too hard. In the small town of Louise, Mississippi, in 1930, when I was still eleven years old, it was then that I came to know the woman folks in these parts called Crazy Alice. Although she seemed quite harmless to most people, I recall being enormously afraid of her. You see, there were many fabrications, tall tales if you will, circulating among the youngsters that Alice was particularly fond of eating little girls. Now that I know better, I realize how ridiculous that