Framed by tour guides visiting Wright Square in contemporary Savannah, ALICE RYLEY goes back to the founding of the city the 1730s and a ghost story that persists to this day. Alice, a newly arrived Irish indentured servant, survives a terrible Atlantic crossing only to be expelled from her first post for praying in Gaelic. Moved to the colony's cattle farm she meets and falls in love with a fellow Irish indenture, Richard White. They serve a cruel master and White murders him. They are caught and condemned to hang. Alice's jailor Mary is also a midwife and sees that Alice is pregnant. She is allowed to have her baby. Alice has a letter written to Governor James Oglethorpe for clemency but the letter is burned by the notary. Later, she sings an Irish lullaby to her newborn and Mary offers to take care of him if Alice put to death. Unfortunately there is no pardon and Alice is hung. Sitting on a bench in Wright square, the tour guide looks up from his book of Savannah ghost stories and sees Alice looking for her baby.
|