Customer Reviews

The Spirit of Sweetgrass

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"The Spirit of Sweetgrass" is a beautiful tribute to southern traditions and lifestyle as well as a disappearing art. The history and Gullah details in "Sweetgrass" makes it a must read for anyone fascinated with the culture of the Lowcountry.

Nicole Seitz writes beautifully, weaving and crafting, not unlike the baskets so diligently and painstakingly woven by her protagonist's loving fingers.

Those who expect a specific genre basket hook on which to hang "Sweetgrass" will find a touch of sweet romance with women's fiction depth, chock full of history and fantasy. "Sweetgrass" stretches beyond one genre and seeps into other categories. If forced to choose, I'd call it literary because of Nicole's style. I got caught up is Essie Mae's life from the beginning, and though there were a couple of chapters that dragged a bit for me, the end satisfied.

Jesus is mentioned throughout, but those who only read clear "how to be saved" Christian fiction aren't likely to feel comfortable reading "Sweetgrass." Nicole has managed to bust open the God box, maybe replacing it with a woven basket so He bursts out all over. Heaven sequences are thoughtful, speculative and may frustrate theologians. Serious jot and tittle Christian fiction readers may want to avoid reading "Sweetgrass," especially if they tend to read with a microscope. Voodoo and "ghosts" are tossed into the mix now and again, too.

If you love to ask God questions and like to ponder heaven, or if you curl up with lazy, literary fiction, quirky characters, cultural details and stories that wrap around your thoughts and your heart, I think you'll enjoy "Sweetgrass."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The characters were so real and likeable. The storyline had great twists that made me want to keep reading. I'm going to recommend this book to all my friends...but I'm not going to loan out my copy...I'll want to read this one again and again.

At seventy-eight, Essie Mae Laveau has had her share of troubles. She buried her husband and has an ungrateful daughter, Henrietta. But now she's found her joy, weaving sweetgrass baskets. Her grandson EJ built her a stand on Highway 17 outside Charlotte, North Carolina to sell her wares. Alongside her in a pink plastic chair sits Daddy Jim, her late husband, encouraging and providing her company.

When Essie Mae recalls how to weave a love basket, she sets her sights on a young blonde and a boy she helped raise. Surely God would want these two to unite. At Jim's suggestion, she weaves a basket for herself and him. That'll get her to heaven sooner, she's sure.

As heaven's gates open for Essie Mae, she meets and greets those who went before--contemporaries as well as Jesus, African slaves and Gullahs. What a glorious place to be. But her connection with the earth isn't severed. She still has work to do. Her departure has left a family rift. She'll need to finish some business before she's released to celebrate.

Steeped in traditions of the Gullah people, Nicole Seitz gives readers a rich character in Essie Mae and much local flavor. Her depiction of heaven and the afterlife is heartwarming and unique.

Armchair Interviews says: A well-written inspirational read.

In her engaging debut novel, THE SPIRIT OF SWEETGRASS, Nicole Seitz introduces readers to the rich and diverse world of South Carolina's Lowcountry Gullah culture, interspersing themes of faith, forgiveness and the importance of family throughout.

Using first-person narrative, Seitz introduces readers to 78-year-old Essie Mae Jenkins, a widow who sells her hand-woven sweetgrass baskets at a highway roadstand. Essie misses "Daddy Jim," her husband who died in three short months from lung cancer: "When Daddy Jim died, my whole life just flip-flopped like a catfish dying on the dock. Right about then's when I took up basket making again." But with her husband gone and income sporadic at best, Essie is in trouble. She owes $10,000 in taxes on her home, and selling baskets won't even begin to cover it.

The known world and the supernatural mingle throughout the novel. In the first half, this mostly consists of Essie talking to Daddy Jim as if he is alive. "Jim, what I'm gonna do? Things is fallin' in all over me." Essie's daughter, the unlikable Henrietta, believes that the answer is for Essie to move into a retirement center. But Essie clings to her home, and to a way of life in the Gullah culture that seems on the verge of vanishing.

She has other disappointments as well. Essie's beloved grandson, EJ, seems intent on marrying a white girl. And Essie's matchmaking talents are seemingly wasted on the good-looking Jeffrey, who doesn't appear interested in women. Most challenging is her relationship with the bitter Henrietta, whose angry spirit widens the deep divide between her and her mother.

Not all writers can handle regional dialect well, but Seitz does an exceptional job here. Although the dialect is heavy, it reads smoothly and enhances rather than detracts from the narrative.

Those readers who enjoy a supernatural, suspend-disbelief component to their fiction will enjoy the second half of the novel, in which Essie dreams that she has died and gone to heaven. There, she meets her ancestors and reunites with those loved ones who have passed on. Seitz paints this heavenly reunion with delightful imagination: "In the Lowcountry, when we would have family reunions, we'd pull everybody together and have a big ol' oyster roast with lots of drawn butter and fried shrimp caught fresh that day. Folks I ain't never seen before from all over would come out the woodwork.... Well, now take that and multiply it by a hundred. That's how crazy it is here in heaven."

Heaven, she finds, is "like everythin' I ever `magined and then some." Essie's "mama" makes her okra soup and cornbread, and Essie and her husband, Daddy Jim, even engage in a little lovemaking. (Is there sex in heaven? Seitz says yes!) And in the afterlife, Daddy Jim says "...ain't no such thing as black and white folks. If somebody's done made it up to heaven, they get to glowin' like a rainbow full of all sorts of colors."

Heaven holds more surprises, as when (in a subtle and poignant pro-life theme) Essie discovers she has a granddaughter who Henrietta aborted and no one else knew about. Although this second half of the novel is less absorbing than the first, it will still hold readers' interest. The weakest portion of the novel may be when Essie and her ancestors return to earth to crash the Sweetgrass Soiree and try to save the basket-weaving culture from the evil spirits conjured up by Henrietta's "hoodoo" or voodoo that threatens to destroy it.

Despite this, Seitz's imaginative story is an absorbing and even educational introduction to the Gullah-Creole way of life. Readers will hope to hear more from this promising novelist.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

I just fell in love with Essie Mae. She was very real. At first I was put off when I read there was "dialect", which usually distracts from my reading enjoyment, but Seitz's written Gullah is beautifully done and sprinkled throughout in small, jewel-like doses. Can't wait for the next book!

Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins is strong minded, strong willed, and my kind of woman. She's knows what she thinks, and she's not afraid to say it out loud where everyone can hear it either. Every day she sits in her roadside stand weaving baskets, and although her beloved husband, Daddy Jim, is dead, he still shows up to sit with her. And no, he's not a ghost, because Miss Essie doesn't exactly believe in ghosts. Although no one else can see him, Essie Mae knows he's there. She pulls out a pink plastic chair for him and they talk about the things that bother her.

Their daughter Henrietta, is one of the things they talk about. Just because Essie Mae hasn't paid her taxes for several years, and her house is going to be sold on the courthouse steps is no reason to put your mama in a nursing home. After all, she only owes $10,000.00. Miss Essie still loves her daughter, even though she's acting downright mean, and Jim knows they didn't raise her to be like that. Besides, Jim says he's not going to no nursing home, and she's not ready to leave him behind.

I knew and loved Essie Mae from page one. She's honest, outspoken, loving, and funny, the kind of character that stays with the reader long after finishing the book. The Spirit of Sweetgrass is as warm and comforting as buttered cornbread served up in one of Miss Essie's baskets. I strongly recommend this one.

The Spirit of Sweetgrass by Nicole Seitz was so enjoyable that I found it difficult to stop reading. I have reommended this book to all my friends who share my love of the Charleston area and its rich history. I absolutely hated for this story to end and cannot wait until the new novel is released.

Thank you Nicole for such a heart-warming and witty book.

Nicole Seitz lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a setting familiar to many of us who've enjoyed books by southern writers such as Pat Conroy, Dorothea Benton Frank, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Rivers Siddons. Nicole's love of Lowcountry culture and heritage comes through in this fun, endearing and inspiring tale of a spirited Gullah woman and her journey of faith, forgiveness, and the fight to save her endangered way of life.

When I first read this book, I was completely taken in by the main character, Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins, a feisty 78-year-old with plenty to say and an adorable way of saying it. Here's the opening line: "This is what I remember about that night--my last night alive." As soon as I read that, I was hooked. The story that follows doesn't disappoint, and keeps the surprises coming to the very end.

One of the things I loved about this novel is that it's contemporary, taking place in modern day South Carolina, yet almost feels historical because it takes me deep inside an American subculture I knew nothing about--the Gullah sweetgrass basket weavers of the Lowcountry. Ever since I read the novel, I've been itching to go down to Mount Pleasant and see the Sweetgrass ladies for myself.

Nicole is not only a novelist (with a second novel on the way from Thomas Nelson), she's a wife, a mother of two, a web designer and an artist. In fact, the painting on the cover of her book is one of her own. This is one talented lady.

If you'd like a book with charming scenes and characters, an unusual setting and culture, an authentic southern voice, and lots of fun, I think you'll enjoy The Spirit of Sweetgrass.

Like most of Seitz' books, The Spirit of Sweetgrass" has a voice all of it's own. We are brought into the life of a basket weaver who is seeing the demise of her livelihood end with "progress" and "modernization". The Gullah/Geechee culture is prominate in this book. Essie Mae's life starts to weave together with two people she met at her roadside stand with surprising and interesting results. By her side is her dead husband who gives Esse Mae the strength to go on, even when things don't seem quite right with her family. I really love Nicole Seitz use of culture and spirituality in her novels. This book has a bit of a twist at the end and gives the reader a nice warm feeling after finishing. I've already passed it on to two friends.

The Spirit of Sweetgrass is one of the most heartwarming stories in contemporary fiction. Nicole Seitz is a master writer, having read all 4 of her novels, I feel that she is a future Pulitzer Prize Winner. The reader will fall in love with her character Essie and desire to explore the basketry of sweetgrass in SC. This is a family read.
Lorraine Danza