Kathryn Smith loves writing about history, strong women, strong drinks, and mystery—or any combination of the bunch.
Born in Macon, Georgia, Smith attended the University of Georgia and majored in journalism, before moving to South Carolina and beginning her career as a journalist. An avid reader, she worked as the book columnist at the Anderson Independent Mail for more than twenty years.
“The concept of writer's block is just totally alien to me because when I was a reporter and editor, I was turning out multiple stories every day,” Smith said.
Her oeuvre speaks to this fact; in the last eight years alone, she has authored or co-authored 11 books, and she isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Smith published her first nationally distributed book in 2016 with Simon & Schuster, highlighting the overlooked accomplishments of a highly influential member of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration: Marguerite “Missy” LeHand.
“Missy had usually been written off, even by really prominent historians, as the competent secretary who's also the girlfriend. But now, I'm being cited as the authority on Missy and she's been given her due,” Smith stated.
“People are saying now that she functioned as his White House chief of staff, which she did, and that makes me really happy because I feel like I've rehabilitated her history,” she continued.
Her second book, published with Evening Post Books in 2019, details the life of another overlooked American woman, Gertrude “Gertie” Sanford Legendre. In 2020 Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre; Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy won the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Book Award for biography, the oldest, most established, national honor in independent publishing.
During World War II, Gertie was the first American woman in uniform to be captured by the Germans on the Western Front, a cursed plan which was conceived in a cocktail bar.
“When I wrote Gertie, my first book with Evening Post, I went to Europe and traced her path from the Ritz bar in Paris—where a martini costs $35—into her captivity and all the places I could find where she was held prisoner. I even rode the train over the German and Swiss border to trace what it was like for her going down those tracks on her way to freedom,” Smith recalled.
In 2020 Smith also began work on her second book with Evening Post Books: Baptists & Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition through the South.
She dedicated the book to her husband, Leo Smith, who accompanied her to bars, distilleries, and museums across the South—“a tough job but someone has to do it,” she quipped—and her father Bruce Yandle, a distinguished professor of economics at Clemson University, who coined the phrase “bootleggers and baptists.”
The phrase, which Smith inverted for her book’s title, is now an established economic concept describing the phenomenon that economic regulations are supported both by groups that believe in the ideological purpose of the regulation, as well as groups that profit from it.
Smith further explored this topic in the companion volume to Baptists & Bootleggers, Methodists & Moonshiners: Another Prohibition Expedition Through the South, also published with Evening Post Books.
Both books include dozens of cocktail recipes that Smith picked up along her travels; for example, in following George Washington’s boozy tour of the South in 1791, she uncovered and shared the recipe for his favorite punch.
“For Methodists & Moonshiners, my aunt went with me. She's just a few years older than I am and we're more like sisters. We just had an absolute blast,” Smith said smiling.
Outside of reading and writing, Smith is an active member of her church and enjoys sewing, a talent she often employs for good in her community, including making homemade keepsakes for dozens of patients in hospice care and their loved ones.
“I really love to sew and I've been a quilter for many, many years. During the pandemic, I made an entire wardrobe of clothes using patterns from the 1960s—and a lot of face masks,” she said.
Smith lives with her husband in Anderson, South Carolina, making frequent trips to Charleston and Fort Mill to visit her children and grandchildren.
Her current projects include a sixth volume to her historical fiction series the Missy LeHand Mysteries, which she self-publishes and co-authors with her highschool classmate and longtime friend, Kelly Durham, and another book featuring cocktail recipes, this one exploring the history of the mystery fiction genre.
“Working with a big New York City publisher was really nice and really interesting. But what I've loved about working with Evening Post Books is that I've had a lot more control over the book—what the cover looked like, for example—and I've just really enjoyed working for a publisher where I can get to know my editor,” Smith said.
By Dorothea Robertson. Uploaded July 26, 2024.