Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library | LP FRANK Lowcountry Tales #08 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lyons Public Library | LP FRA | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | LP Fic Frank, D. 2011 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Dottie Frank's books are sexy and hilarious. She has staked out the lowcountry of South Carolina as her personal literary property."
--Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and South of Broad
The incomparable Dorothea Benton Frank is back with her latest Lowcountry Novel, Folly Beach. As she has with Lowcountry Summer, Return to Sullivans Island, Land of Mango Sunsets, and so many other delightful literal excursions to this magical Southern locale, the perennial New York Times bestselling author enchants readers with a heart-warming tale of loss, acceptance, family, and love--as a woman returns to the past to find her future. Folly Beach is a constant delight from "a masterful storyteller" (Booklist) who has already secured her place alongside Anne Rivers Siddons, Sue Monk Kidd, Rebecca Wells, Barbara Delinsky and other contemporary queens of bestselling women's fiction.
Author Notes
Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Lowcountry Tales Series which includes the books Sullivan's Island and Plantation. Her title's have often made the Best Seller List such as: Porch Lights, The Last Original Wife, The Hurricane Sisters, All the Single Ladies, All Summer Long, Return to Sullivans Island, and Same Beach, Next Year.
Dorothea Olivia Benton was born on Sept. 12, 1951, on Sullivan¿s Island. Her father, William, died when she was 4; her mother, Dorothea Cecilia Blanchard, was a homemaker who raised her children with the two men she married after Mr. Benton¿s death. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of America in Atlanta, she became a buyer for Kerrison¿s Department Store in Charleston and then an executive for a sportswear line in New York and San Francisco. After marrying Mr. Frank, an investment banker, in 1983, she left the fashion industry, had two children and raised money for various charities. She Shifted to writing novels because it suited her storytelling style. She was soon turning out a book a year. Dorothea Benton Frank passed away on September 2, 2019 at the age of 67.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Frank's latest novel displays a rare talent that fans will welcome. Cate's philandering husband has died, leaving her nothing, and the entire contents of her sizable home have been repossessed. She returns to her relatives in Charleston hoping to get a grip on what has happened and on what comes next. Cate's new life with her firecracker of an aunt in the South is told primarily through hilarious and engaging dialogue with family and friends, with a smattering of seriousness along the way. The recently widowed protagonist's journey to rediscovering joy and love will thrill readers, especially with the addition of a suavely integrated story-within-a-story involving a one-woman play about the lovers who wrote Porgy and Bess. There's a certain authenticity to the lives Frank tells that will resonate with many women. Frank's telling of this tale will help readers celebrate love and sexuality after 60. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A widow returns to her childhood haven, Folly Beach, S.C., where she is captivated by new love and a literary mystery.In this latest of Frank's Lowcountry series set on South Carolina's picturesque barrier islands, the heroine, Cate, is another victim of the economic crash of 2008.When she discovers her equity-trader husband, Addison, hanging over her piano in their New Jersey mansion, she only has an inkling of the financial shenanigans that led to his suicide.Within 24 hours, mistresses, paternity claims and collection liens are popping up like dandelions, and Catewatches in horror as all her worldly goods are repossessed. Flat broke (even her engagement bling is a zircon!), she has no alternative but to flee to the South Carolina home of her Aunt Daisy, who raised Cate and sister Patti after they were orphaned as children.Almost immediately, in a clichd fender-bender "meet cute," she finds Prince Charming:professor John Risley, who specializes in the Charleston Renaissance of the 1920s.Soon Cate is installed in the Porgy House (part of Aunt Daisy's beach-rental empire), so named because Charleston Renaissance poet DuBose Heyward and his wife Dorothy lived there while George Gershwin was adapting the Heywards' playPorgyintoPorgy and Bess.Around mid-novel, we realize that the sections that have been alternating with Cate's chapters, narrated by Dorothy, are from a one-woman play that John encouraged Cate to writeor, more accurately, a verbiage-choked rough draft of a play.Cate copes with John's impossible goodness, Aunt Daisy's illness, the pregnancy of her son's narcissistic wife and her actress daughter's rants, but her chief preoccupation is proving that Dorothy, not DuBose, was the real librettist and lyricist ofPorgy and Bess.The narrative is already bogged down by Dorothy's monologues, but the scenes of Cate's post-opulent life are equally interminableFrank is seemingly loath to leave anything out, however mundane.This novel about dramatists, although lightened by some witty down-home repartee, displays little aptitude for scene-craft.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Picking up the pieces of her splintered life after her husband's suicide, Cate Cooper flees cold New Jersey for the warmth of her hometown, Folly Beach, South Carolina. Stopping at the local Piggly Wiggly before heading to the nurturing arms of her elderly aunt Daisy, Cate is involved in a fender bender with one of Folly Beach's most handsome and potentially eligible men. An expert on Charleston's cultural heritage, Professor John Risley is even more smitten with Cate when he finds out she's staying in the Porgy House, Aunt Daisy's beachside cottage, where playwrights Dorothy and DuBose Heyward collaborated with George Gershwin on Porgy and Bess. As the cottage unveils its secrets, Cate contemplates writing a play of her own, encouraged by John's expertise as well as his romantic intentions. Alternating between Cate's personal journey of renewal and flashbacks into the lives of the Heywards, Frank's lush and literary paean to her beloved Low Country provides a romantic glimpse into an artistic past.--Haggas, Caro. Copyright 2010 Booklist