Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022: Young Adult

The selection in this month's Challenge category of "Young Adult" was easy-peasy as the Research Room has precisely the perfect title. It was authored by a native Beaufortonian who has been credited with starting the literary genre! And it also fits as a "50 Shades of Beige" item, too. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head was on school reading lists for 50 years after its original publication. It remains in print and available through major online booksellers.  As her daughter Nancy Head Thode said during a BDC/ Pat Conroy Literary Center presentation on March 27, 2019, "I think having an out of wedlock child is what prompted her to write [it.] It's a story that has some similarity to hers. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, two teenagers struggle with an out of wedlock pregnancy." 

Ann Head's real name was  Anne Wales Christensen Head Morse. She came from a prominent Beaufort family. The author's grandmother, Abbie Holmes Christensen, came to Beaufort during the Civil War to teach the recently freed slaves on the Sea Islands. Her father was Niels Christensen, local businessman, land owner and South Carolina State Senator.  Born on October 30, 1915,  Anne grew up in both Beaufort and Boston, Massachusetts. 

Anne wrote her first novel in childhood though she "abandoned [it] when she became more attached to the villain than to the hero."  She married Howard Head of Philadelphia on February 26, 1939 but they divorced in 1944. Their child was the aforementioned and quoted Nancy Head Thode. Her second husband was Dr. Stanley Morse. He was the father of her daughter, Stacey. Head published over 50 short stories in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, McCalls, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal. She wrote four internationally published novels and was also Pat Conroy’s first creative writing teacher. 

Here's what that famed author wrote of her in The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes from My Life (2004): "She was the first novelist I'd ever met in the flesh. She looked like a woman who would not tolerate a preposition at the end of a sentence or the anarchy of a dangling participle... She required that my adjectives actually mean something when I landed them into one of my overloaded paragraphs." 

Anne Christensen Head Morse died in Beaufort on May 7, 1968 from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 52. At the time of her death, she was negotiating with a Hollywood studio to turn the book into a movie. A few years later her book was adapted into a "Movie of the Week" starring Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Christopher Norris in 1971. 

The Pat Conroy Literary Center recorded our co-sponsored lecture "Remembering Ann Head: Beaufort's Forgotten Author" presented by Nancy Thode on March 27, 2019.

The BDC Research Room contains copies of her novels, Fair with Rain (1957);  Always in August (1961); Everybody Adored Cara (1963);  and Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1967); and a fat vertical file of clippings and some of her magazine articles for our customers to study by appointment. To make the arrangements, call 843-255-6468 or email BDC@bcgov.net.

A Sea Island Lady Celebration at HBF - Slots Going Fast!!!!

Update: Session #1 sold out so quickly that Session #2 has been added. Details are on the HBF website www.historicbeaufort.org.


Some say that A Sea Island Lady is the best book ever written about Beaufort's past. At least the parts about the effect of the Great Sea Island Hurricane and phosphate mining bear obvious signs of diligent historical research. However,  A Sea Island Lady is one of those books one either loves or hates. Many local residents and visitors fall into the "Love" category. To capitalize on all that love, Historic Beaufort Foundation is hosting several fund-raising events in September to celebrate the book and its author, Francis Griswold, an HBF benefactor.

The original session set for 25 September - Dinner & A Lecture "Reading Nineteenth-Century Beaufort in Francis Griswold's A Sea Island Lady"  with Dr. Mollie Barnes $ sold out so quickly that a second session has been added. Tickets are expected to go quickly for Session #2 - which actually so don't delay! Details are on the HBF website www.historicbeaufort.org.

30 September - A Sea Island Lady Walking Tour $

Exhibit about author Francis Griswold in the Verdier House $

Tickets may be ordered online at www.historicbeaufort.org/shop or by calling the HBF office at 843.379.3331.

A reminder:

All units of the Beaufort County Library will be closed on Monday, September 4th in honor of Labor Day. Regular schedule at all locations will resume Tuesday, September 5th.

For now the Beaufort District Collection is usually open Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, 9 am to 5 pm. Access on Tuesdays and Wednesdays is by advance appointment only. Please make the necessary arrangements by calling 843-255-6468 or by e-mailing bdc@bcgov.net.

Please note: We do not monitor emails or telephone calls after 5pm weekdays, on Saturdays, Sundays, or on holidays. We are not a 24/7/365 work place.

On another topic, the Beaufort Branch Library is going to pilot a curbside delivery service beginning Tuesday, September 5th. Read all about that in the Library's News and Notes.

My Lowcountry 3 Book Club (and YouTube)

As many of you know, the BDC focuses our limited funds and selection time to non-fiction materials about the history, culture, and environment of our part of South Carolina. But that doesn't mean we are completely hands-off when it comes to novels. We leave the promotion of local novels and fiction authors to the considerable skills of others.

Q: Did you know that My Lowcountry 3 evening news has a Book Club segment hosted by Amanda Brewer?

A: Odds are you may not have heard about it. Today, for a change of pace, I want to highlight the My Lowcountry 3 Book Club and its hostess, my Reference Librarian colleague, Amanda Brewer.

Please note: Ms. Brewer does the Book Club segment on her own off-duty time.

Brewer, a reference librarian at our Beaufort Branch, recently interviewed Carl E. Linke, author of Haint Blue, on television My Lowcountry 3. His novel, set in Beaufort (SC), has main character Kip Drummond challenged at home and at work by changing economic conditions. A developer wants his land -- and his livelihood. What dirty secret does the developer threaten to expose? Click on the screen below to view the 4 minute, 12 second YouTube video.

If you've just watched the video, you heard why Linke decided to use Gullah dialect in his novel. Here are a few of the resources we have in the BDC about the use of written Gullah in literature:

A Study of American Literature which incorporates the use of the Gullah dialect by Marcia Marvin Lavely [microfiche] at call number SC 427.9757 LAV

The Representation of the Gullah dialect in Francis Griswold's "A Sea Island Lady" by Mailande Cheney Sledge at call number SC 427.9757 SLE

The seminal study of Gullah dialect is Africanisms in the Gullah dialect by Lorenzo Dow Turner. We have several different editions and revised editions in the BCL.

(The only downside is that you'll need to wait until we re-open September 30th to read some of the suggested titles above).

Don't forget to search YouTube for other Amanda Brewer and/or BCL related videos!

Novels in the BDC

Latest update: 1 April 2026 - gmc 

As many of you may already know, the Beaufort County Library encourages reading in a myriad of ways.

Some folks like to read novels. Some folks do not.
Some parts of the library system collect novels. Some do not.

It comes as a disappointment to working novelists that the BDC does not actively collect or share novels through the Research Room or in the Local History sections at the branch libraries.

We have a few here in the BDC (about 15 linear feet out of more than 250 linear feet of books or approximately 6% of the total published format holdings). The vast majority are from deceased local authors such as Ann Head (the nom de plume of Anne Christensen Morse, born Beaufort, SC) and Mary Howard Schoolcraft, born Grahamville, SC, who wrote a novel defending the institution of slavery called The Black Gauntlet in 1860.

But one does not have to be a dead local novelist. We include a few still living and breathing novelists, too.

Other novelists represented within the BDC FICTION holdings are: Lois Battle, Annie T. Colcock, Marie Conway Oemler, Roger Pinckney, Pat Conroy, Grace Fox Perry, Francis Griswold, Valerie Sayers, and Chalmers S. Murray.

One's odds for having one's work added to the BDC FICTION holdings are increased: if the author was born or was reared in Beaufort County AND the novel is based or mostly based within Beaufort County. Long-time residents (which I define > or < as 10+ years or longer) are sometimes included. Reviews, in the professional literature or from fellow librarians, also a piece of the criteria for selection. Self-published materials have less of a chance of being added to the permanent BDC research collection, but the fact that the novel was self-published does not exclude a novel from selection. (Prime example: Kathryn Wall). And, of course, we've been dealing with ever constricting space issues for more than 5 years which limited the number of materials we could bring into the BDC for permanent retention. (It is so good to be moving soon!)

In other words, selecting appropriate fiction for the BDC has been even more complicated than selecting appropriate non-fiction for permanent retention in the BDC.

Bottom line: The mission of the BDC remains "to acquire, preserve, maintain and make accessible a research collection of permanent value which records the history of the area of lowcountry South Carolina known as the old historic Beaufort District." We must concentrate our limited funds and focus on non-fiction materials about the history, culture, and environment of our part of South Carolina. It's our primary focus.