Sweet Hush: A Novel [Hardcover]

Deborah Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003 | Series: Smith, Deborah

The sorrows and secrets of Hush McGillen's life are as deeply rooted as the famed Sweet Hush apple orchards her family has tended for more than a century. As a devoted mother, young widow, and successful business woman, Hush has worked hard to restore her family's farming fortunes. At the same time she has tried to hide the truth about her late husband and their tormented marriage from her son, Davis. Now Davis suddenly returns home from college to tell his mother he has eloped with a fellow student, and, to Hush's horror, the eyes of the entire world turn to her family and her private, guarded life - because her son's new wife is the rebellious daughter of the President of the United States.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An apple orchard provides the atmospheric background for Smith's (A Place to Call Home) ninth novel, but a farfetched romance reduces it to hijinks. Hush McGillen introduces her family's apple farming history in the mountains of Georgia, where they raise a renowned hybrid apple, the Sweet Hush. Hush has been involved with the orchard since her father died when she was 12. She assumed responsibilities for the business as well as for her little brother, Logan, after her mother died when Hush was 16, the same year she fell pregnant and married race car driver and womanizer Davy Thackery. Davy isn't responsible, but he is a loving father to his son Davis, and proud of Hush as she builds her orchard into a multimillion dollar industry. After Davy's death in a car accident, the story jumps 23 years forward to when Davis brings home Edwina "Eddie" Jacobs, a fellow Harvard student and the daughter of the president of the United States. History has repeated itself; Eddie is pregnant, and the couple has fled to the orchard to elude Eddie's surveillance team of Secret Service agents. Hush battles with the irate First Lady over how to handle the situation. She also meets the president's nephew, Nick Jabokek, a weapons specialist, who alternates narration with Hush and falls for the apple magnate. In contrast to Hush's salty, humorous language ("I would rather eat dirt and shit roots first"), Nick's voice is that of a cliched tough guy: "I slept with the kind of women who moved fast and left damage behind." Together, they try to prevent the unwelcome barrage of negative publicity from revealing buried family secrets. Although the plot is implausible, Hush McGillen's voice is rich enough to keep the reader hooked.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Hush McGillen Thackery is named after her family's resilient and captivating Sweet Hush apples and in many ways takes after them. Driven since the day she was born, Hush overcomes one obstacle after another to make the family orchards prosper. Through lean times and back-breaking seasons, she marries young, gives birth to her son, and becomes a widow, and Sweet Hush Farms, Georgia, flourishes, but Hush has her regrets and painful secrets. When her son appears with his surprising new wife--Eddie Jacobs, the daughter of the president of the U.S.--so does the media, and Hush is forced to face her past and protect her own. Then Nick, Eddie's mysterious and handsome uncle, arrives. Nick is immediately attracted to Hush's boldness and beauty, while Hush is drawn to his commanding presence and underlying sweetness, but they tread carefully before edging into romance. Will their love be enough to overcome the secrets that threaten to destroy them? Full of enchanting folklore and southern charm, Smith's latest is a beautifully written and touching tale. Megan Kalan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1 edition (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316806501
• ISBN-13: 978-0316806503
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,324,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bell Bridge Books

Deborah Smith is a founding partner and VP of BelleBooks and its main division, Bell Bridge Books. Check here for news and updates on the titles she and her partners are publishing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Hush is About a Lot More Than an Apple Orchard, April 28, 2003

By 

FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Hush: A Novel (Hardcover)

Hush McGillen Thackery knew at a very early age that she was going to be someone. Suffering through her family's poverty and losing both her parents by age sixteen, Hush decided she would turn the family apple orchards into a profitable business again.

Though she was made fun of for selling apples from a road side stand, it only inspired her. Hush kept going. Surviving.

She was given control of Sweet Hush Hollow and custody of her five-year-old brother, Logan. Her childhood friends, Davy and Smooch, vowed to help her.

When Hush becomes pregnant with Davy's child, she reluctantly agrees to marry him, knowing he will not be faithful. Hush is still determined to make the orchards a success.

She handles the obstacles one by one, choosing to keep her family life discreet. The years fly by and Hush has turned Sweet Hush Hollow into the profitable family business she knew it could be.

Life is good, comfortable...until one day her now 23-year-old son calls her to let her know he is on his way home from college. He arrives with the President of the United State's daughter in tow. They are married and pregnant.

Hush is thrown into the public eye. Her life of secrets is threatened as she discovers a real bee charmer and ultimately her true self.

Deborah Smith did an excellent job bringing these two families through a crisis and to an understanding of each other. There were little stories within the overall story which kept the pages turning through the night.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You laugh, you cry..., February 19, 2003

By 

joyuz (manchester, mo. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Hush: A Novel (Hardcover)

When I read the jacket for this book I thought, Oh no, how hokey. Here's another book about the President's family, and the books I've read lately with this type of story line have not rung true.

Admittedly the presidental angle of this story is just a little hokey but Deborah Smith makes it work. The author pulls in the reader with great groundwork, inserts a strong heroine in a believable background, and then weaves a compelling story I couldn't get enough with an overall effect of a finely written concerto.

Is it just another southern tale? Yes and no. Yes it's set in the south with many colorful southern folks but the author weaves these characters into a fine tapestry where they add a richness but never overtake the story.

In addition, she adds a great hero who I came to empathize with until eventually I wanted and needed him to find his heart's desire. And he does, very satisfactorily.

Put all the components together and voila--magic. The story made me laugh and cry and root for the characters; I couldn't put the book down. This is a gem in a long run of literary disappointments. Don't pass it up.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Winner of the WordWeaving Award for Excellence, May 1, 2003

By 

C. Penn "WordWeaving" (Greenville, SC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet Hush: A Novel (Hardcover)

The fifth of her line, Hush McGillen Thackery believes people are born to be whoever they want to be. It is all in how they tell their story. Hush spins a tale of true love, of the perfect Harvard son and of a successful apple farm. But love was rotten to the core with a man who did not live up to revered image, but whose presence made it acceptable for a business woman to succeed. Now secrets from the past threaten to bring down Hush's idealist image and destroy all she holds dear when her son Davis brings the world's scrutiny because he brings home his secret bride--the president's daughter.

The president and his wife are convinced that Hush has ulterior motives and that the marriage between their daughter Hush's son was somehow coerced. They vastly underestimate this Appalachian queen who rules her home, farm and county. When they send the president's cousin Nicholas Jacobek to bring the situation under control, Hush meets the only man in her life who can match her skill at charming bees. But Jacob's dark past conceals a man of kindness and of mercilessness who will do anything to protect family, even kill.

Author Deborah Smith succinctly captures the flavor of the south and of powerful matriarchs in SWEET HUSH. Readers will find it impossible to forget these rich characterizations and mesmerizing prose. Hush is blunt, fierce and determined, deserving of a hard man like Jacob. The president's wife Edwina would be easy to hate except Smith carefully reveals her vulnerabilities, devotion and motivation in a way that not only makes her understandable, but likeable despite her bitchy ways. Readers will delight in the image of Hush and Edwina throwing rotten apples at each other in the White House. Easily followed shifting points of view provide interior views of complex motives and tantalizing possibilities. In all, three love stories wind their way around the reader's heart, resulting in a must read tale reader's won't want to miss. SWEET HUSH earns the WordWeaving Award for Excellence.