Just fifteen miles inland from Charleston, South Carolina sits the charming city of Goose Creek, a vibrant community with a history over three centuries in the making. That history teems with all the trappings of a traditional Lowcountry city, but to many, Charleston's long historical shadow has obscured Goose Creek, and few know the real story of the people and events that define the city's past. With Goose Creek, South Carolina: A Definitive History 1670-2003, Michael J. Heitzler seeks to shed light on Goose Creek's fascinating history.

The first of a two-volume set, Planters, Politicians and Patriots illuminates the foundations of Goose Creek and the lives of the Europeans and Africans who settled in the wilderness and out of it carved successful plantations - Sedgefield, Otranto, Medway and more - as large and lucrative as any in the Lowcountry.

Heitzler's second volume employs hundreds of never before used primary sources such as private journals, tenant farmer rosters and hunting club records to reveal the lives of the white landowners who controlled the forests and fields and the African Americans who lived virtually invisible as they endured on small farms.