Simply Southern: the humor, insight and fun of a southern good old gal [Paperback]

Cappy Hall Rearick (Author)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cappy Hall Rearick lives on St. Simons Island, Georgia with husband Bill and their spoiled rotten Cockatoo, Tallulah. Rearick, an award winning short story writer, authored the successful column "Alive and Well in Hollywood" while living in that bedrock of decadence in California, and most recently penned, "Tidings," a regular feature of Southeastern Writers Association, of which she is a past president. She is the author of "Christmas Past," a sold-out collection of short stories, and recently completed her first novel. She is the mother of two sons and has five grandchildren. Her E-mail address is: [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris, Corp. (September 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140105675X
• ISBN-13: 978-1401056759
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,141,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cappy Hall Rearick is an award winning short story writer, the author of five published books and five successful columns: Alive and Well in Hollywood; Tidings; Simply Southern; Simply Senior and Puttin' on the Gritz.

She is past president and former Board member of the Southeastern Writers Association, and former member of the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Board of Directors. She holds memberships in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Georgia Writers Association, South Carolina Writers and Florida Writers Association. Highlighted by the Erma Bombeck Writers as a Humor Writer of the Month, Rearick's humor and short fiction have been featured in anthologies throughout the country.

Rearick attended the University of South Carolina, Chicago School of Interior Design and Penn State University. She was a Flight Attendant for American Airlines, an Interior Decorator, a kindergarten teacher and an actress. In her early adult years, she was listed in an edition of Outstanding Young Women of America.

Cappy's novel, Return to Rocky Bottom was published in April, 2009. Her second novel, The Road to Hell is Seldom Seen, is as yet unpublished but looking for a home while she juggles time to work on a third novel, Bridging the Gap. Two years after her first collection of columns, Simply Southern was published, Simply Christmas, a collection of holiday short stories was published. The third in the Simply Series, Simply Southern Ease was published June, 2006.

Cappy is the mother of two South Carolina sons and she has five grandsons, affectionately known in the Simply Southern Series as the Grandkids from Hell. She also has four granddaughters tenderly referred to as the Little Women. A cat named Igor with an eating disorder shares space with a whiny cat, Sophie Sorrowful. The two of them round out the family dynamic.

Cappy Hall Rearick resides on St. Simons Island with her husband, Bill and whenever possible at their second home in Saluda, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Southern? Simply Smashing!, December 4, 2002

By 

Sharon Smith Henderson (Brunswick, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simply Southern: the humor, insight and fun of a southern good old gal (Paperback)

Simply Southern
by Cappy Hall Rearick

Reviewed by
Award-winning journalist and author,
Sharon Smith Henderson

Dyed-in-the-cottonpatch Southerner, Cappy Hall Rearick cut her baby teeth in South Carolina and grew up to become a card-carrying flight attendant. Winging her way west to LA-LA Land (Southern California) she began her career as a columnist, penning Alive and Well in Hollywood. A couple of
husbands later she migrated back to rest on the Golden Shores of St. Simons Island.

Along the way she has honed a biting sense of humor which spares no sacred cow. Simply Southern, appearing in Weekend, a local weekly tab noted for its irreverent take on the world, provides Rearick with a platform from which to launch her barbed commentary. Wryly capitalizing on her blondness, Rearick attacks the perils of middle age, marriage, shopping, pet ownership, (where the pets are the owners)and relationships.

Now in book form, Simply Southern is a diverting treasure which will delight the reader today, tomorrow, and still pop up new and fresh when it surfaces during a
shelf-cleaning exercise five years down the road. Among those falling victim to her caustic wit: Easy-going husband, Babe, his dumber-than-a-box-of-hair Cockapoo, Tallulah Blankhead, family, friends and the stranger-than-fiction characters she meets every day.

Shifting from humor to nostalgia, in "Rocky Bottom" she describes her childhood swimming hole. "The cold, black Edisto River snakes through Orangeburg and the South Carolina Low Country where I was born and raised. Swimming pools were a luxury only movie stars could afford, so we swam at Lee's
Pond or in the Edisto River. Rocky Bottom was a shallow area floored with small rocks and stones, and it is there that I learned to swim.

"I went to sleep last night thinking about the Edisto River, the Pavilion and Rocky Bottom . . . how my friends and I would spread blankets on the hill near the water and remain there all day long soaking up sun. I remembered learning how to
dance at the Pavilion, then shagging the night away to the juke box sounds of Elvis, Fats Domino and Little Richard. We used to wash our hair with Prell Shampoo just beyond the safety rope underneath the bridge. The cold, black river water rinsed it
clear and made it squeaky clean."
No taste of Rearick's work would be complete without a visit to the doggy side of the household. "Tallulah Blankhead ran away from home yesterday. She's spoiled rotten and is obsessively attached to Babe. She has never left the back yard
by herself. Why? Because she's joined at the hip with her bed, food bowl, and her favorite toy -- a pale green stuffed rabbit named Mr. Bill.
"I walked outside thinking she might have wandered onto the golf course and got herself bonked in the head by an errant Titleist. When I stopped hollering her name and started listening I heard her incomparable Cockapoo bark.
"Two blocks away, I spied her, snarling at a fire hydrant that some clever Southern patriot had painted gray and white to resemble a corpulent Confederate soldier. By the time I got to her, Tallulah had barked herself into a war whoop. Then she tore into General Lee as if he were drenched in Eau de Alpo." (Maybe we need to poijnt out, this is Babe's pooch--and he's from Pennsylvania. Maybe Tallulah is Yankee spy?)
Speaking of Yankees, living in a beautiful resort area, one is deluged with uninvited northern visitors appearing with seasonal regularity. In "Well, Shut My Mouth!" Rearick narrates her role as the reluctant hostess to a pair described as Lucy and Ethel at their worst.
Joining her for lunch are Doris, Babe's Yankee cousin and her equally Yankee friend, Ginger, here on a mini-snowbird visit. "Well! If this isn't the cutest, most awesome little café!" exclaims Ginger. She bats her mascared eyes. Fighting like cats and dogs, the two of them have been trying to out-do and out-shout each other since they arrived.
Without regard to other people in the restaurant, Doris's voice breaks the sound barrier. "Oh, shut UP!" she yells good-naturedly. "No, YOU shut up!" Ginger replies. They high-five each other and shout, "Awesome," in unison.
Before their Yankeeness becomes a catalyst for Southern diners to remember Fort Sumter and take revenge, I grab Doris by the arm and threaten to pinch her till she's cyanotic. "Simmer down! You sound like a couple of sixty-five year old displaced Valley Girls."
"This is how we always talk. What's wrong with that?"
I must have been crazy to think I could take these two out in public. Ginger is pointing at the day's special: Pork chops, black-eyed peas, collard greens. Yum.
"You people don't actually eat this stuff, do you?"
"Oh, that's nothing,' shouts Doris. 'They even eat hog jowls and something called chitlins."
I push my chair back. "Y'all excuse me. I need to wash my hands." I turn the corner and stride right past the Ladies Room on my way out the back door. "I'll bet you a Cuban Cigar that Lucy and Ethel will never miss me."

But don't you miss the opportunity to laugh until you fall out of your chair, and perhaps shed a tear or two at the antics and reminiscences in what is sure to become a regional favorite. Simply Southern, published by ExLibris, is available at
The Book Mark in St. Simons, and online at Rearick's website,...,Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Borders.com.
Past president of Southeastern Writers Association, Rearick is an award-winning writer of short stories. Her first novel, Seldom Seen, is presently under review for publication while she works on a second novel called Four O'Clock Curtain and a collection of Christmas stories slated for publication in book form.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Discovery, November 10, 2002

By 

Laura Partin (Chino Hills, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simply Southern: the humor, insight and fun of a southern good old gal (Paperback)

Simply Southern is a great read by a refreshing new author. Cappy Hall Rearick's style is reminicent of Erma Bombeck yet unique to the South and it's colorful charactors. No subject is tabu, including "the grandchildren from hell, the spoiled rotten cockapoo, and husband Babe." you will feel like you have had a long visit with an old friend. A great holiday gift idea.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Southern, November 7, 2002

By 

Harry Rubin (Hinesville, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simply Southern: the humor, insight and fun of a southern good old gal (Paperback)

I have read Cappy Hall Rearick's writing in newspaper columns for years and have always found them very humorous. I was happy to see that she has put some of the funniest in a collection in a book. She is a worthy sucessor to Erma Bombeck and Paula Wall as a writer of American humor. I really enjoy her writing and I usually do not read anything that is pure humor. I have told a lot of my friends to read it.