Dorothea Benton Frank's sequel to Plantation, Lowcountry Summer, will be a welcome read for fans who "appreciate Frank's signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities." About the matriarch of a Southern family trying to keep everyone in line, the novel "lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries." And in Peter Heller's Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, we get a "gripping memoir of finding the value of life while shooting the curl off Baja."
Lowcountry Summer
Dorothea Benton Frank. Morrow, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-061-96117-5
Here's one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Frank's signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities. In this long-time-coming sequel to Plantation, opinionated and family-centric Caroline Wimbly Levine has just turned 47, but she's less concerned with advancing middle age than she is with son Eric shacking up with an older single mom. She's also dealing with a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, Frances Mae; four nieces from hell; grieving brother Tripp; a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart; and a serious crush on the local sheriff. Then there's Caroline's dead-but-not-forgotten mother, Miss Lavinia, whose presence both guides and troubles Caroline as she tries to keep her unruly family intact and out of jail. With a sizable cast of minor characters with major attitude, Frank lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries; below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance. When Frank nails it, she really nails it, and she does so here. (June)
Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave
Peter Heller. Free Press, $15 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9420-1
Journalist Heller's gripping memoir of finding the value of life while shooting the curl off Baja starts off as a disappointing middle-aged man's lament about the lack of love and meaning in his life. Just back from an exhausting assignment in Tibet, he gets a phone call from an old friend in California who wants Heller to come out so they can take surfing lessons together. Reluctant at first to leave Denver and his girlfriend, Kim, he follows the call to this new adventure. At Huntington Beach, Heller violates every rule of surfing etiquette, and other surfers vilify him as a kook, a beginning surfer. Initially, Heller is embarrassed, but he soon becomes so consumed by surfing that he brings Kim to California with him so that she can take lessons; soon, the two are traveling to various surfing locales in California and Mexico as Heller follows the waves. People admire surfers so much, he argues, because they have bowed to a force greater than themselves-the wave-and have transformed themselves into beings who can respond to such power with grace, humility, and beauty. By the end of this powerful memoir, Heller has learned that surfing is not simply about staying up on your board; it's about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea. (July)
