By SANDY LONG

MILFORD and VENICE, ITALY - Fall has brought an end to the dizzying growth that marked the average summer garden. It is a time for finishing up, for putting to rest. But in Milford, exciting stuff just keeps coming up.

This time, the event is a book signing and reading, scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 21, with journalist John Berendt, author of the best-seller "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." He will read from the exceptionally popular work in the garden of Robert and Dottie Goldbach.

"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" was on the New York Times bestseller list longer than any other hardcover fiction or non-fiction book in history, with more than four million copies sold, and also won the prestigious Southern Book Award. It was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and was made into a motion picture directed by Clint Eastwood. Berendt is former editor of New York magazine and a former columnist for Esquire.

The event is a fundraiser for the Milford Enhancement Committee of the Pike County Historic Preservation Trust.

From his apartment in Venice, Italy, Berendt, a longtime supporter of architectural and historical preservation, described Milford as "quite beautiful... peopled with diverse, accomplished and interesting individuals." His support of the preservation efforts currently underway in Milford root in his concern that the town "has reached a crossroads in its history, a point where important decisions must be made with an eye toward preserving that which is artistic, beautiful and important historically." He emphasized, "If you lose touch with the past, you become rudderless."

In "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Berendt successfully preserved a slice of time in Savannah, Georgia's past, the entwinement of its people, culture and history. Berendt found himself "reporting on a moment in history," capturing in great detail the unique qualities of life in the essentially isolated Southern city sealed off by its "moat of woods and marshes." In so doing, Savannah retained its rudder, enabling it to navigate through a huge increase in tourism, described by Berendt as having tripled in the past six years.

Today Berendt finds himself at work on a novel "set largely in Venice," a city with an interesting similarity to Savannah. Both cities are partly defined by their isolation from the outside world. Venice "floats in a lagoon at the end of the Asiatic Sea," Berendt noted. "I thought by coming here I could find myself encapsulated in a world within a world."

As such, the city boasts a decidedly unique architecture and a compelling array of individuals. Berendt is drawn to "the stories of Venice's expatriates who've come here to use Venice as a backdrop for their own personal dramas, as a sort of grand stage to enact whomever one is. I'm interested in why they do it and what kind of lives they lead."

In the meantime, Berendt continues to tour and read from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." If you've read the book or seen the movie and would love to meet the author, there is no need to creep around some mist-shrouded cemetery with a voodoo priestess. Encounter John Berendt in a Milford garden, mid-afternoon, while contributing to the historic preservation of a magical town.

Tickets are $15 and are available at "The Gallery at Forest Hall," Broad and Harford Streets, Milford, or by calling Joan Schneider at 570/296-6640.