DG Martin interviews Dot Jackson - Refuge
In Refuge , a young Charleston society matron named Mary Seneca Steele goes to bed while considering what to wear for her suicide. Now, suddenly seized by an otherworldly fiddle tune playing in her head, she arises, steals her children and her husband's new Auburn Phaeton, and sets out on a journey of enlightenment in the year 1929, which begins with learning to drive. Before she makes this impetuous exit from the proper South, Mary Sen's worst transgression has been going out in public without her hat. But there will be no returning to her old life once she abandons it.