The Sweet Hell Inside is the four-generation saga of the fascinating Harleston family of South Carolina, the progeny of a Southern gentleman and his slave, who rise from the ashes of the Civil War, cast off their blemished roots, and create a cultural dynasty during the 1920s Jazz Age.
Charter members of the Southern “colored elite,” the Harlestons achieved early wealth that afforded them the comfort of chauffeurs and servants whose skin was darker than theirs. It also launched the family into a generation of glory as painters, performers, and photographers.
The Sweet Hell Inside features a celebrated portrait artist whose subjects included industrialist Pierre du Pont; a black classical composer in the Lost Generation of 1920s Paris; and the founder of orphanage who creates the famous Jenkins Orphanage Band, a definitive force in the development of ragtime and jazz.
The Harlestons’s remarkable one-hundred-year journey spans the waning days of Reconstruction, the precious art world of the early 1900s, the back alleys of the Jazz Age, and the dawn of the civil rights movement. With evocative and engrossing storytelling, Edward Ball introduces a cast of historical characters rarely seen before: cultured, vain, imperfect, rich, and black—a family of eccentrics who defied social convention and flourished. The Sweet Hell Inside raises the curtain on a unique family drama that takes its place in the pageant of American life.