Pawleys Island: A Lowcountry tale (Lowcountry Tales) (Hardcover)

by Dorothea Benton Frank (Author) "PEOPLE have secrets..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Olivia, Nat Simms, Harry Albright (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Frank's fifth Lowcountry Tale is a lively story about friendship and family, Southern-style. On the small South Carolina barrier island that gives the book its title, semiretired attorney Abigail Thurmond spends most of her days playing golf and gossiping with her best friend, the portly, lovably aristocratic Huey Valentine. But their comfortable lives of leisure are turned upside-down with the arrival of one diminutive Rebecca Sims. Becca's obvious artistic talent and poise make it easy for Huey to show her art and hire her to manage his art gallery, but when his 86-year-old mother unearths Becca's tragic past, Huey can't help sticking his aquiline nose in her business. Once an attentive wife and loving mother of two in Charleston, Becca became the victim of her abusive husband, who turned her children against her and then filed for divorce. Abigail and Huey must help their new friend, of course, and as they draw closer to one another through Becca's tribulations, Abigail is finally able to examine the ghosts that have haunted her for years, and Huey gets to reveal a (pretty unsurprising) secret of his own. Frank's absorbing narrative manages to feel both authentically Southern and universally empathetic.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Frank's fifth book in her Lowcountry series (following Shem Creek, 2004) focuses on the tight-knit community of Pawleys Island, an "arrogantly shabby" oasis off the coast of South Carolina. Shifting first-person narratives invite you into this charming southern isle that, behind its decorum, is the kind of place that you don't go unless you want your life shaken and stirred. Rebecca Simms naively seeks retreat there, but she soon realizes just how tangled and involved island life can be. Her new employer, his feisty mother, and their ex-lawyer friend all drag out Rebecca's painful past. Through these newfound friends' curiosity and genuine concern, Rebecca soon finds that she cannot hide from her recently shattered marriage. This compulsively readable novel tackles the weighty topics of marital infidelity and self-transformation, but its warm conversational tone will give it appeal to fans of both Fannie Flagg and Larry McMurtry's Terms of Endearment. A true southern comfort. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover; 1St Edition edition (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425202712
• ISBN-13: 978-0425202715
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #331,239 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #32 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( F ) > Frank, Dorothea Benton

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner From The Charming and Witty Dot Frank, June 11, 2005

By	Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Wonderful characters who spout witty dialogue, the luscious South Carolina setting she is famous for, and hefty helpings of the food and manners bred as only the South can breed, make this latest offering from Dot Frank a true gem for lazy summer days. Even if you're not reading it on the beach, you will smell the salt air and experience the sand between your toes. The author puts you there as she has in her four previous books because she does local color better than most anyone writing today.

But it is the wonderful characters that will stay with you long after the last page is turned. Perhaps, Dot's most memorable creation to date is the inimitable Huey Valentine. He's the true Southern gentleman, dedicated to his art gallery and his menu planning, a devoted son to the aging and delightful Miss Olivia, and with a surprising twist that will leave you open-mouthed at the novel's spectacular ending. It is Huey who takes in runaway wife Rebecca and calls in his best friend, retired attorney Abigail Thurmond, to help Rebecca dissolve her marriage and get custody of her two children. Abigail is quite a creation herself, a middle-aged woman battling depression and shouldering huge amounts of guilt over the deaths of both her son and her husband. How Huey and Abigail find a purpose in life in helping Rebecca, how magnificently-drawn supporting characters like Charlene, the ultimate Redneck Woman, move the story along, and how life on Pawley's Island changes for the better, make this a most entertaining book.

Thank you, Dot Frank. You've done it again!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unjust Southern Caricatures, July 25, 2005

By	Susann D. Giilbert "Susann Disbro Gilbert" (Mount Pleasant, South Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was terribly disappointed by this latest effort from Dorothea Benton Frank because I enjoyed her earlier stories about the Lowcountry. Being a resident of this area myself, I wanted to like the book, but the implausibility of the initial domestic relations situation was my first clue that I wasn't going to buy into this story. The complete bias of the court decision was a real slur to the Charleston County court system, which does not have a reputation for being so short-sighted as to remove all rights from a mother on hearsay. The other situations in this story are also too pat. The main character, Rebecca, hasn't held a job in years, or seriously worked on her art, but has the sudden good fortune to live in a wealthy friend's condo, successfully sell watercolor paintings for high prices, and be taken under the wing of a filthy rich, flamboyantly gay gallery owner, Huey Valentine. As with most of the characters in this book, Rebecca's new-found friend is a cliche and a caricature. Every black person in this book is a servant, speaks ungrammatical English, and refers to white people as "Miss" or "Mr." (Christian name). As someone who lives near Pawley Island, I assure you, dear readers, that these stereotypes of southern blacks is not true, and such portrayals do little to forward the image of the South. The author also should have researched domestic relations more thoroughly and presented the crisis more realistically. I don't know any ethical lawyer in South Carolina, or any other state, who would advise their client to meet their estranged, abusive husband for lunch on his transparent premise of letting her read letters from her children. Divorce and custody issues are not so black-and-white as they are in this tale. The majority of divorced or separated mothers do not get so lucky as to get free private investigators, have their lawyers become their new best friends, and have jobs fall into their laps. There also seems to be one set of rules for the father and an entirely separate set for the mother. Even after the long, drawn-out, but expected, happy ending, I found myself liking the mother less and less, as she continually refered to her husband's girlfriend as a "whore" to her teenaged children. This is not new-found assertiveness, but the same name-calling that she herself had been subjected to. One can only hope that the entire family gets themselves to counseling ASAP as the destructive behavior just goes on and on. Also, the bratty kids are not likely to suddenly change their behavior because mommy won the custody battle. After years of spoiled over-indulgence, within days they are charming, well-behaved and speak with respect.
I can only warn potential readers to read this novel with a grain of salt: if you believe the legal crap in one-hour television dramas, you'll buy into the implausibility of this story.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Divine Miss Dottie Strikes Again!, May 29, 2005

By	W. Kaplan "calyndula" (Wynnewood, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Dotttie Benton Frank's Lowcountry Tales are so much fun to read, so perfectly charming, that I snapped this new one up the minute it was available. I was not disappointed.

This fifth entry in Frank's wonderful Lowcountry series takes place on South Carolina's barrier island, Pawleys Island (I have learned so much about South Carolina's low country since reading these books and I want to visit so much!). Here we find the quirky, one-of-a-kind Huey Valentine, owner of an art gallery, and a throwback to the fine gentlemen of the Old South--with a very modern twist (I'll let readers find out for themselves). He lives on an impossibly elegant and beautiful plantation with his grand dame mother, Miss Olivia, and his houseman, Julian.

Best friend and former high-powered family law attorney Abigail Thurmond is there too, having retired from her practice in Columbia and come home to her family's shabby but much-loved cottage. Abigail is nursing deep wounds and is in danger of sinking into a depression when newly single mother Rebecca stumbles upon the scene.

Immediately, Huey, Abigail and Miss Olivia take this wronged wife under their collective wings...worming the story out of her as only genteel gossips can--and then opening up their homes and hearts to help her. The process of undoing the wrongs Rebecca's vile ex husband has heaped on her bring Abigail back to life, helping her, Rebecca, Rebecca's wronged children and everybody else in the process.

As always, the story is told with enough humor to make the reader guffaw, and enough truth and sensitivity to sooth any heart. An absolutey PERFECT summer read; snap it up!