Helen Avis Drexel

She rose to prominence through her appearance in the John Berendt non-fictional novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994), in which she was a composite character named Serena Dawes.

[1] She attended Washington Seminary in Atlanta and the Finch School in New York City.

[1] He died on January 14, 1948, at his Wappaoola Plantation,[2] in Charleston, South Carolina, after a souvenir pistol accidentally discharged.

"[10] In 1994, John Berendt included a composite version of Drexel, whom he named Serena Dawes, in his cast of characters in his bestselling non-fiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

[13] (Prentiss Crowe's lines about Danny Hansford being "a good time not yet had by all" were instead spoken by Dawes in the film.)