A journey to Myrtle Beach, S.C., gives an elderly Southern mother the heartrending opportunity to share a painful, long-held secret with her gay son in Villas’s eloquent fiction debut. The veteran food and wine writer (My Mother’s Southern Kitchen
) concocts a savory dish in Ella Dubose, a feisty 73-year-old widow who smokes, drinks, carries a gun in her purse and does what she wants, when she wants—just so long as Goldie Russell, her Cherokee companion, is riding shotgun. While vacationing at a seaside inn, and waiting for her famous author son to join them, Ella stumbles on a romantic surprise, vacationing Yankee Dr. Edmund O’Connor. When her son, Tyler, does arrive, Ella yearns to tell him about his real father—not her husband, Earl Dubose, father of Tyler’s two siblings—but a Jewish WWII veteran driven to suicide. Tyler, however, also has a secret and a struggle of his own. Villas depicts Ella’s dilemma and relationships with flair and a perceptive eye, capturing the Low Country’s nostalgic allure with loving skill. (Oct.)
