Betsy Wakefield Teter in Conversation with Erin Templeton

Betsy will be in conversation with Erin Templeton. After their discussion and an author Q&A, Betsy will be signing copies of her book.

The Spartanburg County Library will be giving away copies of A Carnival of Crime to the first 30 attendees. This is a free event, but we'd love to know you're coming!

About the Book

Through ten interconnected true-crime stories, this historical account captures a South Carolina county’s most violent decade—a time when bullets felled a mayor, a police chief, and a beloved bookseller, each in separate shocking incidents.

Illustrated with dozens of photographs, A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg delves into the exploits of a crooked local attorney who became one of the nation’s most slippery con men, the controversial hanging of a teenaged girl, and the bedlam unleashed when a governor tried to crush the moonshine trade. All this chaos and more unfolds amid Spartanburg’s first economic boom, as cotton mills multiply across the county and the community becomes one of the South’s rising industrial powers, generating many great fortunes.

At once a gripping true narrative and richly researched local history, A Carnival of Crime reveals how ambition, corruption, and rapid economic change shaped the region in unexpected ways. The result is a vivid portrait of a community coming of age—where prosperity and violence often advanced side by side, leaving behind stories that still echo more than a century later.

About the Author

Betsy Wakefield Teter is a native of Spartanburg, a one-time journalist and, for 22 years, the executive director of the Hub City Writers Project. Her previous projects with Hub City include Textile Town, North of Main, Hub City Christmas and many others. Now retired, she enjoys travel and writing community history.

About the Conversation Partner

Erin Templeton is the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor of English at Converse University, where she teaches courses on all things American literature. She serves on the board of directors of the International F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and is currently working on an edition of Tender is the Night for Oxford University Press's World Classics series. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Hub City Writers Project. In her spare time, she is probably running, walking her dogs, and/or listening to an audiobook.