The Author
Angela Gail Griffin is a lifelong resident of Georgia and currently lives near the Georgia Writers Museum and the Uncle Remus Museum. Three of Georgia’s most beloved authors, Alice Walker, Flannery O’Connor, and Joel Chandler Harris, began their writing careers within twenty miles of her hometown. Angela finds it fortuitous that her dream of putting pen to paper to share the enthralling family stories passed down by her mother came true on Georgia writers’ hallowed ground.
When not writing, Angela enjoys oil painting, sculling, and making music with her family. Accompanied by her husband on guitar and brothers on banjo and harmonica, Angela joins in on the autoharp and dobro. She believes the family that plays together stays together. This is her first book.
Photo Gallery
Lula filled her scrapbook with snapshots of her friends and Budley’s family. There is only one photograph of her only sibling, Harry, seated and wearing coveralls, 2nd page, top row, in her book. She saved many photos of babies and children, but none of her only child, my grandmother, Mildred.
My great-grandmother, Lula, in 1939, the year her husband Budley died, and the year she brought her twelve-year-old granddaughter, my mother Irma, to live with her. At the time of this photograph, Lula is fifty-three years old and still trying to atone for what she did to Mildred by raising Mildred’s child.
My grandmother, Mildred Robinson on the Robinson farm in 1946. When she was pregnant with her seventh and last child in 1947, Heber sold the farm and dumped her and their children at his oldest daughter’s house in town.
My mother Irma, right, age: 20, and her sister Frankie, age: 14. A few months after posing for this photograph, Frankie escaped her abusive home and moved in with my newly married parents, Irma and Joe.
Lula and Budley’s home and store once stood on the right side of this dirt road. The Watermelon Creek Vineyard is across the highway.
My grandfather, Heber Robinson. They say the eyes are windows to the soul. When I look into his eyes, I see darkness.
A few years after my great-grandmother, Lula, and her husband Budley Beasley commissioned this portrait in 1936, Budley died, and Lula moved her twelve-year-old granddaughter, my mother, in with her.
Me placing flowers on Lula’s grave. My dad described her as “wild” so I bring her wildflowers.
Lula’s headstone in the Watermelon Creek Baptist Church Cemetery, Glennville, Georgia. Ironically, a woman who abused and abandoned her child is buried with “Mother” above her name.
In 1942, my mother worked as a teenage welder on Liberty ships at the Brunswick, Georgia shipyard. This is a photograph of a 23-foot scale replica of a Liberty ship in Mary Ross Waterfront Park in downtown Brunswick.
Me facing Lula’s old homeplace on the other side of the grape orchards at the Watermelon Creek Vineyard and toasting the women of the wind.
The day my editor finished reading my manuscript and said it was good.