SOURCE: "Drag Queens, Death and Dixie," in Newsweek, Vol. CXXIII, No. 9, February 28, 1994, p. 62.

[In the following review, Jones describes Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as an affectionate portrait of Savannah, noting its popularity with Georgia audiences.]

Yankees have always been beguiled by Savannah. When Gen. William T. Sherman cut his incendiary swath through the South in 1864, he spared Savannah and presented it to President Lincoln as a Christmas present. A century later, Esquire columnist John Berendt showed up for a long weekend, wound up living there off and on for eight years and concluded his stay with a book-length bread-and-butter note, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

At first glance, Berendt's nonfiction portrait of Georgia's oldest city looks like anything but a proper thank-you. The characters he celebrates include a drag queen, a piano-playing deadbeat, a man who walks an imaginary dog and...