On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye

When Gregory White Smith and Steve Naifeh stumbled on Joye Cottage, it was love at first sight. They’d just finished their Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Jackson Pollack, and they were fed up with apartment life in New York City. What better way to escape than to sell everything and get a steal on a rundown, turn-of-the-century mansion built by robber baron William C. Whitney in that most exotic of all places, the American South? So what if none of its sixty rooms was air-conditioned? So what if the roof leaked and plaster fell from the high ceilings in murderous chunks? So what if the grand old place was rumored to be haunted? Smith and Naifeh were determined to make their lifelong fantasy of living in a palace come true – and nothing could stop them.
On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye is the story of their three-year adventure transforming this “handyman special from hell” into a home – while adjusting to the rhythms of small-town life in magnolia-shaded Aiken, South Carolina. As the authors of bestselling true crime books, Smith and Naifeh had encountered all kinds of colorful characters, but nothing could have prepared them for the crew that showed up to “help”: an ex-Mafia plasterer, brawling painters, feckless security men, randy gardeners, and heavily armed carpenters.