Lowcountry Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank

In Lowcountry Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank we return to Tall Pines Plantation and revisit the Wimbleys and other characters introduced in the 2001 novel Plantation.

From Publishers Weekly (via amazon)
Here's one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Frank's signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities. In this long-time-coming sequel to Plantation, opinionated and family-centric Caroline Wimbly Levine has just turned 47, but she's less concerned with advancing middle age than she is with son Eric shacking up with an older single mom. She's also dealing with a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, Frances Mae; four nieces from hell; grieving brother Trip; a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart; and a serious crush on the local sheriff. Then there's Caroline's dead-but-not-forgotten mother, Miss Lavinia, whose presence both guides and troubles Caroline as she tries to keep her unruly family intact and out of jail. With a sizable cast of minor characters with major attitude, Frank lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries; below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance.

Passages
On a hurricane meal
Orders were taken and eventually we sat down to what could be characterized as a hurricane meal, which would be one prepared with whatever could be found but with no electricity or water, having boiled the pasta in Evian on a charcoal grill or whatever we had on hand, although Trip would have been apoplectic if we had used bottled water to cook.  The cost, you know.

On a new-to-me word (scrying)
"Don't make me go scrying in my bowl this morning, you 'eah me?  What's going on 'round 'eah?" (Millie)
"Scrying?" Rusty said.
"The art of predicting the future by staring into water.  Nostradamus did it all the time.  Very handy for predicting the end of time and all that I [Caroline] said.

On mother's sending children off to wherever
...I turned around one day and saw that he had grown peach fuzz above his lip and on the sides of his face.  On and on it went until he towered over me and melted my heart every time I heard his man voice say, "I love you, Mom."
"I just hate for you to leave, Eric."  I couldn't help pouting.
"Yeah, me, too.  But you know I'll be back as soon as I run out of clean socks."
"All over the world, mothers depend on that."

On another foodie description
For dinner today, Millie had baked a fruited ham and made red rice, deviled eggs, green-bean salad, a zillion biscuits, and brownies that were so rich and chocolaty they made you literally drool for another cold glass of milk.

Revisiting and catching up with the Wimbley family and the goings-on at Tall Pines definitely fell into the category of a good summer read.  Most everyone was still doing what they do best, whether that be Millie's holding everything together or Frances Mae's wreaking havoc.  Add to that the less than genteel or appreciative daughters of said Frances Mae, and you have the makings of a good family-in-turmoil story. 

My only real problem with Lowcountry Summer?  Where was Dr. Jack Taylor?  When last we left Caroline Wimbley Levine in Plantation, she seemed to be in a committed relationship with Jack.  Fast forward to Lowcountry Summer, page 3, and we are introduced to her current beau, "a wonderful guy named Bobby Mack" without so much as a fleeting reference to the fate of Jack.

Rating:  3.5/5 (Fiction scale)
Dedication:  In loving memory of my sweet brother, Billy
First sentence:  It is a generally accepted fact that at some point during your birthday, you will reassess your life.

Extras
Click here to visit the author's website.
For more information on the Ashepoo, Combahee and South Edisto (ACE) Basin--the setting for Lowcountry Summer and Plantation--click here. 

Other Reviews & Information
Sharon's Garden of Book Reviews
Publisher's Page

Plantation by Dorothea Benton Frank

Plantation by Dorothea Benton Frank has been on the "gotta get to this book" list for some time. Now that a follow-up book, Lowcountry Summer, has just come out, I figured it was time to get to Plantation which I had downloaded to my Kindle last year.

From Publishers Weekly (via amazon)
...this colorful contemporary romance effortlessly evokes the lush beauty of the South Carolina Lowcountry while exploring the complexities of family relationships. When Caroline Wimbley Levine learns that her mother, Miss Lavinia, has supposedly gone mad, she leaves the big city bustle of Manhattan and returns to Tall Pines Plantation. Caroline originally left Tall Pines to escape her feisty, eccentric mother and her drunken brother, Trip, but when Miss Lavinia dies, Caroline is forced to come to terms with her family's troubled history as well her failing relationship with her husband. As Caroline reminisces about her past rebelliousness and her childhood, she realizes that her father's sudden and tragic death many years before served as a catalyst for the family's disintegration. Caroline and Trip also learn that their seemingly selfish and self-assured mother was not so uncaring after all. While most of the story is told from Caroline's point of view, journal entries written by Miss Lavinia open several of the chapters, providing the narrative with additional texture and warmth. Although the novel is short on plot, readers will enjoy immersing themselves in the lives of these deftly drawn, heartfelt characters.

Passages
On bookshelves
Turning out lights, I looked around at what Richard and I had built in the last thirteen years. We had six rooms of travel memorabilia from our wanderings. Our bookshelves were crammed with learned opinions on every area of psychology and psychiatrics in and out of print. Those were Richard's. They were his library and his weapons. My books were on textiles from around the world, Japanese gardens, obscure religions such as the cargo cultures of West Africa. Sometimes it seemed that he focused on the mind of man whereas I studied the spirit and what man held sacred. Our bookshelves were as good a starting place as any to see the differences between us.

On a doctor's office
His walls were covered with diplomas and citations and photographs of what appeared to be open-air-market people in Istanbul and Greece. He apparently liked to travel and to read. In addition to bookshelves of reference materials on various skin diseases, he had a small collection of leather-bound old books--classics--probably first editions. He treasured books. He couldn't be all bad.

On appreciation and simplicity
But when the red ball of the sun slipped under the Edisto River that evening, I was pretty sure that life didn't get much better than being in the place you loved most, surrounded by the people closest to your heart.

Plantation was a story of a family finding its true self again after years of misinterpretations and misunderstandings. I enjoyed seeing Caroline Wimbley Levine find her heart and home, although it seemed at times that she certainly was taking a lot of needless side trips along the way.  I have put Lowcountry Summer on my library reserve list; however, I see from many reviews that this follow-up to Plantation is getting some of the same bad reviews as did Return to Sullivan's Island. Sometimes, unless it is clear that the author set out to write a series, characters may be best served by our remembering them as we last knew them in print or as we, the readers, chose to imagine what happened next.


Rating: 3.5/5 (Fiction Scale)

Dedication: For Peter

First Sentence (from Prologue): This story I have to tell you has to be true because even I couldn't make up this whopper.

Personal note: Lavinia Boswell Wimbley took a fancy to the poetry of Rod McKuen.

The Beach House

The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe had been languishing on Mt. TBR for some time, and a bookmark at page 32 marked an earlier attempt to read about Caretta Rutledge and her coming of age story. I say coming of age because despite the main character age in years one immediately thinks of when a book is described as such, I think we can come of age at any time in our lives when we shed what came before and look ahead with renewed purpose.

From Publishers Weekly

After losing her high-powered advertising job in Chicago, Caretta Rutledge grudgingly returns to her low-country roots at her mother's behest. Cara has long resented her mother, who focused her maternal efforts more on looking after the annual loggerhead turtle spawn than on protecting herself and her children from their abusive father. But when Cara learns that her mother is ill, she must lay her bitterness aside and try to make amends. Cara starts by restoring her mother's small beach house and joining the same turtle brigade she resented while growing up. In the process, she reconnects with an old friend and finds love in the arms of a local boat owner and naturalist. This poignant read won't disappoint fans of so-called "Southern Fiction;” the South, which represents both poison and tonic, is eloquently portrayed here, and its healing properties inevitably come to the fore. Just enough information about the loggerhead turtles and their spawning cycle opens each chapter, swiftly engaging the reader from the outset, and all of the integral characters are richly developed. With its evocative, often beautiful prose and keen insights into family relationships, Monroe's latest (following The Four Seasons) is an exceptional and heartwarming work of fiction that is bound to please fans of women's fiction and romances alike.

I finished The Beach House this morning after we’ve been through a week of the coldest weather in years and as another six inches of snow was blanketing the yard; however, I felt the warmth of the South Carolina sun, felt the sand between my toes, and heard the steady and true sounds of the ocean. The book opens with this passage:

It was twilight and a brilliant red sun lazily made its hazy descent off the South Carolina coast. Lovie Rutledge stood alone on a small, rolling sand dune and watched as two young children with hair the same sandy color as the beach squealed and cavorted, playing the age-old game of tag with the sea. A shaky half smile lifted the corners of her mouth. The boy couldn’t have been more than four years of age yet he was aggressively charging the water, the stick in his hand pointing outward like a sword. Then, turning on his heel, he ran back up the beach chased by wave. Poor fellow was tagged more often than not. But the girl… Was she seven or eight? Now there was a skilled player. She danced on tiptoe, getting daringly close to the foamy wave, instinctively knowing the second to back away, taunting the water with her high laugh.

What memories that stirred up for me. Has it really been twenty-five years since I stood and watched my son and daughter playing the same game on a Cape Cod beach?

This book stirred up many memories not because my mother and I were ever at loggerheads, but because on these cold wintery days I have read how Cara learns not to fight what her mother is going through but to help her through it. As daughters, our first instinct to fight the inevitable and it does take strength to step outside ourselves to help. Even after many years have passed, a turn of phrase in a book of fiction can pop the top on the box safely stored in our hearts, and the raw emotions claw their way back.

My family life and circumstances are and were nothing like Cara’s, but the exploration of the mother-daughter bond, that most dynamic of relationships fraught with loggerhead moments, made this a standout reading experience for me.

Prologue EpigraphLoggerhead. 1. Latin: Caretta caretta. A tropical sea turtle with a hard shell and a large head. 2. A stupid fellow; blockhead. 3. At loggerheads; in disagreement; in a quarrel.

DedicationThis book is dedicated to my fellow members of the Isle of Palms/Sullivan’s Island Turtle Team [list of names] and to all Turtle Volunteers here and elsewhere who walk the beaches every morning to help our beloved loggerheads.

EpigraphPerchance you have worried, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seem rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with the turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the way of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer? Time for a turtle’s egg to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. They have no worries, have no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?

-Henry David Thoreau Journal August 28, 1856

Finished January 18, 2009

Rating: 4 of 5 (General Fiction)

Pages: 477

Publisher: Mira

Copyright: 2002

Format: Trade Paperback