My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Meet Abby and Gretchen. It’s 1988; they’re 16 and have been best friends since the fourth grade. They both attend Charleston, South Carolina’s prestigious Albemarle Academy.  Gretchen comes from a wealthy if distant family and Abby…does not.  Abby and Gretchen have a great friendship.  Closer than sisters, they’re always together no matter what their parents think.  One evening during an attempt to take acid, Gretchen, Abby and a two other friends run around a country estate waiting for the drug to kick in.  Gretchen gets the great idea to go skinny-dipping and before the others can stop her, she’s ripped off her clothes and dashed through the woods towards the river.  The others realize what Gretchen hasn’t: the tide is out, affecting the depth of this part of the river.  Abby races through the woods trying to find her friend.  She finally finds Gretchen cold and muddy a few hours later.   While it seems like crisis has been averted, their problems are just beginning.

It begins with Gretchen not being able to sleep.  Her parents say they hear weird sounds coming from her room at all hours.  She loses weight.  She won’t shower.  She rarely talks to any of her friends and when she does, manages to say or do something outrageously nasty.  Abby tried to appeal to Gretchen’s parents but gets a typical “We know our daughter.  She’s fine.”  This is genteel, southern code for “We don’t talk about our problems out loud and we certainly wouldn’t talk about them with YOU.”  In a desperate plea, Abby tells Gretchen’s mother the whole story of what happened the night Gretchen started to act strange.  Before she knows it, she’s been accused of dealing drugs and is forbidden to see her best friend.  Everyone else has ditched Gretchen.  Her parents and teachers are in denial.  How can she help her friend if she’s not even allowed to talk to her at school? 

One morning nearly a month after the incident, Gretchen arrives at school completely changed.  Not only has she showered, but she’s gotten a drastic new haircut, new clothes and seems to be… almost glowing.  Everyone wants to be seen with Gretchen, wants to date her, or wants to be her friend.  Sinister things keep happening to Abby and Gretchen’s circle of friends.  When a voice that isn’t Gretchen’s speaks from her best friend’s mouth Abby finally knows the truth: Gretchen’s been possessed.  Is Abby and Gretchen’s friendship stronger than the devil himself? 

Readers who enjoyed Hendrix’s first book, Horrorstör, will appreciate the author’s second novel. Adult and teen horror enthusiasts alike will find plenty to entertain while grossing themselves out.  Bonus: the book is set up like a high school year book which makes for some entertaining finds before and after you finish the novel. Check out MyBest Friend’s Exorcism from the library today!

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

This new novel by the acclaimed author of The Secret Life of Bees tells the unlikely stories of two very different women in 19^th century Charleston.  Spanning more than thirty years, Kidd reveals the lives of Sarah Grimké: middle child in a large, wealthy South Carolina family and Hetty Handful Grimké: a slave owned by the Grimké family.  We begin in 1803 around the time of Sarah’s eleventh birthday.  The young girl is presented with two very different gifts: a chance to graduate from the nursery into her very own bedroom and a slave for her own personal maid.  Immediately Sarah tries to refuse the second “gift” from her mother.  This only ends in Sarah embarrassing her mother in front of a bunch of guests and having to write out many apology letters.

Late that same evening, Sarah sneaks into her father’s study to copy out a manumission document in order to free Hetty Handful outright.  Her father is a very important lawyer.  Surely he will carry out her wishes? Sarah remarks “What could Father do but make Hetty’s freedom as legal and binding as her ownership?  I was following a code of law he’d fashioned himself!” But when Sarah finds the document torn in two and lying in front of her bedroom door the next morning, she knows that helping Handful obtain her freedom will be more difficult than she’d imagined. 

Kidd allows us to see the two girls grow in friendship though their backgrounds are very different.  But Kidd also allows the reader a glimpse into the horror and brutality of slavery.  As we get to know Handful, we see that her mother Charlotte has dreams of freedom.  Though the woman is an expert seamstress and clearly the most valuable slave in the Grimké home, she is not content.  After years of bowing, scraping, and saving money from odd jobs outside the household, Charlotte disappears.  Handful, while heartbroken that she has been left behind, hopes that her mother is living somewhere as a free woman. 

Sarah grows and changes as the years go by.  She begs to become the godmother of her youngest sister, Nina, and her influence on the child is very apparent.  While Sarah quietly changes her religious views and begins to study abolition, Nina is a girl of outspoken and firm conviction.  After both women are jilted by potential husbands, the two join forces and become the first female voices for abolition; travelling all over the northern states speaking to other women about their views. 

Kidd has found an interesting way to bring the very real Grimke sisters to life.  Readers who enjoy historical fiction will not be disappointed in Kidd’s third novel.  TheInvention of Wings is available everywhere on January 7th, 2014.

Moon Over Edisto by Beth Webb Hart

The Bennett family was happy and loving.  For years, the married couple and their two daughters spent their summers in a little beach house on Edisto Island less than an hour away from their Charleston, South Carolina home.  The girls fished and sailed boats, their mother cooked large, sumptuous meals and their father immersed himself in his favorite hobby: painting.  One summer, the eldest daughter Julia brings her college roommate to stay with the family.  Marney becomes like an adopted daughter, joining in on family activities and working with Julia to save money before going back to college again each fall.  But one summer, something is different.  Marney stands a little too close to Charlie Bennett, drinks from his cup, stares a little too long.  That fall, Charlie announces that he is divorcing Mary Ellen and stays out at the beach house permanently with Marney. 

Before the Bennett’s know it, Marney is expecting a child and Charlie marries her so the two can start a new family.  Heartbroken, the Bennett women all deal with this loss in different ways.  Julia flees to graduate school and then New York City where she has become a famous painter and visual arts teacher at a university.  Second daughter Meg keeps everything in her life as orderly and proper as possible and continues to do so throughout marriage and children.  Mary Ellen takes up a new job in Charleston and becomes a well-respected frame restorer for an antique store.  Each of the women avoids the issue as much as possible, even after Charlie’s death several years later.

Fast forward twenty-five years and the Bennett women have rebuilt their lives in one fashion or another.  Then one evening after Julia is preparing for a large art show, Marney appears at her door in New York.  She has lung cancer and needs Julia to care for her three children while she recovers.  Julia, who has never met her half siblings (and never wanted to) and has a big Fulbright scholarship trip planned to Istanbul in the coming months is convinced that there must be someone else who can care for these children.  After all, Marney ruined her family and years of her happiness.  Julia certainly doesn’t owe her anything.

But Julia changes her mind and returns to South Carolina and the island that she has tried not to think about for years.  Terrified that this trip will destroy her emotionally, she treads very lightly at first.  But when she sees the youngest boy who has her father’s eyes, the middle daughter who loves to draw and paint just as she and her father used to and the serious eldest child who loves to read she finds herself falling in love with the family she never knew. 

Julia may not find all of the answers to her questions, but by returning to Edisto she does more for herself and the three children than she’d ever imagined.  Moon Over Edisto is full of the southern Gothic and emotional pull of a complicated family saga.  Most of Hart's books take place in Charleston or the South Carolina lowlands and anyone who has ever visited will tell you her portrayal is as real as it gets.  This book isn't all southern belles and sweet tea, but it is chock full of charm and personal growth.