University of North Carolina Press, 2010

The Chief Vann House is one of Georgia’s more popular State Historic Sites, drawing thousands of guests to a restored house and estate that interprets antebellum Cherokee and plantation culture. Tiya Miles’s new book, The House on Diamond Hill, delves into the Chief Vann House’s formative years, bringing to life the complex world of a multiracial and multicultural frontier South. Along the way the book also searches for the roots of historic meaning, or as Miles asks: “What is it we are connecting with when we walk the oak halls of this exquisite plantation home . . . What really took place on these well-worn grounds? What does this house stand for?” (xv).