Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

Claire Waverly, a highly-sought caterer, has an instinctive flair for cooking and more – her food has magical properties. She’s a bit of a solitary recluse, living and working alone in the house where she grew up, and she is perfectly content with her lifestyle. Then her sister, Sydney, returns home to Bascom, North Carolina, after a long absence, and disrupts everything. She has a five-year-old daughter, the niece Claire did not know she had, and she needs shelter from an abusive ex-boyfriend. As the two sisters confront each other and the abuse in their own shared past, Claire is forced to drop her guard, which opens the door for new possibilities.

Sarah Addison Allen describes Garden Spells as Southern-fried magical realism with a love story at its heart. It also has an ornery apple tree that flings prophetic apples at people. If you like Alice Hoffman, you might also like Sarah Addison Allen. Now is a good time to read Garden Spells and her other novels The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and The Peach Keeper. Her new novel Lost Lake, is set to release early in 2014.

Check out Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen @ the library!

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.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

After a horrific scandal tears her family apart, sheltered, headstrong, fifteen-year-old Thea Atwell is banished from her beloved childhood home on a citrus farm in Florida to the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, isolated deep in the North Carolina mountains.  Forced to leave behind her twin brother, Sam, her older cousin Georgie, and, perhaps worst of all, her beloved pony, Sasi, Thea is exiled from everyone and everything she has ever known.

With the Great Depression just beginning, Thea and the other girls at camp, all the daughters of wealthy Southern men, are sheltered from the worst of the storm tearing apart the rest of the nation.  Although Thea hates that she has been sent away from Sam, Georgie, Sasi, and the Florida heat, the mountains of North Carolina are spectacular, she is surrounded by horses, for the first time is receiving formal equestrian instruction, and is discovering how to makes friends with girls her own age.  Although her arrival so late in the summer means gossip about trouble with a boy at home is rampant among the Yonahlossee girls, the real reason behind Thea's late enrollment is known only by the headmaster, Henry Holmes, and his wife Beth, an old boarding school friend of Thea's mother.  Free to start fresh, Thea must decide if she can forgive herself for what happened - and her family for refusing to forgive her - and become a new, different girl, or if she will allow her desires for the things she cannot have to once again consume her.

This suspenseful family drama slowly reveals its secrets against the spectacular scenery of the Appalachian mountains and the late summer heat of Florida.  Beautifully written, anyone who loves period drama, Southern fiction, or can't resist a boarding school coming-of-age story (really, who can? And this one has horses!) should put The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls on their summer reading list!

The Yonahlassee Riding Camp for Girls will be published on June 4, 2013.  The library received its advance reading copy from the publisher.  Check CountyCat in late spring to place a hold on this Southern novel!

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

It’s the summer of 1948 in rural Virginia.  Charlie Beale has just arrived in town and quickly endears himself to the townspeople with his good looks, baseball talent, and butchering skills.  He becomes a second father to the owner’s son, Sam, and soon meets the teenage wife of Boaty Glass, the richest man in town.  Charlie becomes obsessed with her and heads down a path of destruction that changes the town forever.    This gothic tale of secrets and lies will entertain you.  Check out Robert Goolrick’s first novel, The Reliable Wife, from the library, too!

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Emily Benedict has traveled to her mom’s childhood home in Mullaby, North Carolina to answer questions about her mother who has passed away.  She lives with her grandfather who she has never met . The town does not welcome her and she soon realizes it’s not going to be easy to figure out what happened that caused her mom to leave and never come back.  Filled with magic, misfits, and far reaching secrets, The Girl Who Chased the Moon is an enjoyable read.  I am definitely going to check out Sarah Addison Allen’s other books, including The Peach Keeper and The Sugar Queen.  Both received rave reviews when they were first published.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

Mosey, Liza, and Big are three generations of women dealing with heartbreak and loss. Each of them is given a part of the story to narrate.  These different perspectives slowly reveal the layers of secrets in their family.  Joshilyn Jackson, a talented southern fiction author, creates yet another tale filled with surprises and memorable characters.  She manages to make the story an uplifting one, infusing laughter and love at every turn.  Check out A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty @ the library!

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Once a Camellia, always a Camellia.  Both funny and heartbreaking, this coming of age novel follows sharp, witty Southern debutante Sarah Walters from Charleston's Wednesday night Cotillion Traning School to her escape to college in the North, through love, heartache, disillusionment, and her eventual return home in response to the siren song of the South. Readers of Pat Conroy, Anne Rivers Siddons and Dorothea Benton Frank's novels will want to check out Girls in Trucks!