In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon Sylvester Manor, a stately mansion guarded by hulking boxwoods.
When Griswold went inside, she encountered a house full of revelations, including a letter from Thomas Jefferson and--most remarkable and disturbing--what the aged owner, Andrew Fiske, casually called the slave staircase.
This staircase would reveal the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery, and in 1997 Griswold returned with a team of archaeologists, uncovering a landscape filled with stories.
Based on years of research--and voyages that took her as far as West Africa--Griswold has given us both the biography of a place that has witnessed war and reversals in fortune, and the riveting story of the family that has occupied it for three centuries.
A fine-grained account and a sweeping drama, The Manor captures American history in all its richness and contradictions.
About the Author: Mac Griswold is a cultural landscape historian and the author of Washington's Gardens at Mount Vernon and The Golden Age of American Gardens.
She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Travel + Leisure.
She lives in Sag Harbor, New York.
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Manor: three centuries at a slave plantation on long island, paperback/mac griswold
