Epilogue: Quash Stevens, after the Storm

Quash Stevens found his world fractured. The hurricane swept past Kiawah Island, rendering it “Destersory.”¹ He and his wife Julia had suffered through a terrifying night as the hurricane raged around their house and knocked down one of its chimneys, perhaps damaging the diploma from the Hampton Institute in Virginia that Julia had proudly hung on the wall to commemorate her 1871 graduation.² Quash wrote to his would-be sister-in-law Adele, then his primary correspondent among the white Vanderhorsts, in Charleston of the destruction. The Vanderhorst “big house” from the early 1800s had lost half its roof. Barely a drop of