by Edward Ball
First published 2005
Edward Ball investigates the extraordinary life of Dawn Langley Simmons, a British writer who became the center of scandal in 1960s Charleston, South Carolina. Born Gordon Langley Hall to servants at Vita Sackville-West's English estate, Gordon moved to New York in his twenties and cultivated friendships with high society women. An inheritance from Isabel Whitney funded the purchase of a Charleston mansion. In 1968, Gordon underwent pioneering sexual reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, becoming Dawn and shocking the Southern community. Months later, Dawn married a young black mechanic and appeared to become pregnant, later raising a daughter. Ball approaches this story as a detective mystery, peeling back layers of deception and examining the evidence surrounding Dawn's many secrets. The book reveals how one person challenged every social boundary while forcing observers to question what they thought they knew. Ball delivers both a compelling biography and an exploration of identity, race, and gender in the changing South.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, gender-studies, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: identity-crisis, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Charleston, England, New York, South Carolina
Period: 1960s, 20th-century
288 pages · Paperback · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: sexism, transphobia