The Spirit of Sweetgrass (Paperback)

~ Nicole Seitz (Author)
Key Phrases: basket ladies, sweetgrass baskets, pink chair, Essie Mae, Daddy Jim, Mount Pleasant (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an enjoyable debut novel, Seitz offers an interesting first-person narrative about the life (and seemingly, the afterlife) of an elderly Gullah-Creole basket weaver. By the side of Highway 17 in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina sits 78-year-old Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins, crafting baskets of sweetgrass and talking to her dead husband Daddy Jim. Relations are strained with her daughter Henrietta, who thinks Essie belongs in a retirement center. If Essie can’t pay $10,000 in back taxes to save her home, she may have no choice. More tensions: her grandson EJ wants to marry a white girl, Essie discovers that a handsome man she’s trying to find a girl for is gay, and her daughter carries a hidden secret. When Essie hopes she’ll die and go to heaven, the book shifts less successfully to the afterlife, where her Gullah-Creole ancestors surround her and she’s reunited with Daddy Jim. Together, they team up to return to Earth and battle two spirits conjured up by Henrietta’s voodoo that threatens to ruin an attempt to save the sweetgrass basket weaving culture. Although uneven after a strong start, the first-person narrative in heavy dialect is engaging and readers will enjoy the bits of Gullah culture and history salted throughout.

Product Description

Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins is a 78-year-old sweetgrass basket weaver who sits on the side of Hwy. 17 in the company of her dead husband, Daddy Jim. Inspired by her Auntie Leona, Essie Mae finally discovers her calling in life and weaves powerful "love baskets," praying feverently over them to affect the lives of those who visit her roadside stand. When she's faced with losing her home and her stand and being put in a nursing home, Daddy Jim talks her into coming on up to Heaven to meet sweet Jesus -- something she's always wanted to do. Once there, she reunites with Gullahs and African ancestors; but soon, her heavenly peace is disrupted, for she still has work to do. Now Essie Mae, who once felt powerless and invisible, must find the strength within her to keep her South Carolina Family from Falling apart.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Integrity/Thomas Nelson (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591455065
• ISBN-13: 978-1591455066
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #504,710 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great story!, April 24, 2007

By	J. Zaio (South Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved Essie Mae, August 10, 2007

By	Liz "Liz" - See all my reviews

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!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Educational introduction to the Gullah-Creole way of life, June 6, 2007

By	FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

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