"Joseph Gatins boasts a remarkable family tree, and chronicles their dramatic ups and downs with great verve and insight in this very aptly titled We Were Dancing on a Volcano. It's a narrative full of memorable characters--from the Irish brothers who first came to Atlanta in 1849, to a great-grandfather whose gambling operations in New York City provided the wealth with which he built and operated the Georgian Terrace Hotel, to his one-armed grandfather and the French heiress who married him, to his father's harrowing experience in and ultimate escape from German POW camps during the Second World War, and his romance in the midst of it all with Gatins' mother, daughter of Columbian expatriates in Paris. Though their lives and those of other ancestors, equally colorful, Gatins makes this as much a rich social history of Atlanta--and early twentieth century Paris--as it is a compelling family saga."--John C. Inscoe, editor, The New Georgia Encyclopedia.