The Beach House - First Chapter / First Paragraph and Teaser Tuesday

     Today's post features The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe. It's a beautifully written story about 40-year-old Cara and her mother who is dying of lung cancer. Cara goes back home to the barrier islands of South Carolina and while caring for her mother, confronts issues that have followed her since she was a child. Loggerhead turtles figure in the plot too, and I learned a lot about them through this story.
     Seems like a lot of the books I've been reading lately are set at the beach. Maybe it's time for a getaway to someplace warm! 
FYI: This book is part of a trilogy.


First Paragraph:
Prologue
     It was twilight and a brilliant red sun lazily made its hazy descent off the South Carolina coast. Lovie Rutledge stood alone on a small, rolling sand dune and watched as two young children with hair the same sandy color as the beach squealed and cavorted, playing the age-old game of tag with the sea. A shaky half smile lifted the corners of her mouth. The boy couldn't have been more than four years of age yet he was aggressively charging the water, the stick in his hand pointing outward like a sword. Then, turning on his heel, he ran back up the beach, chased by a wave. Poor fellow was tagged more often than not. But the girl... Was she seven or eight? Now there was a skilled player. She danced on tiptoe, getting daringly close to the foamy wave, instinctively knowing the second to back away, taunting the water with her high laugh.

Teaser (from Page 179 of my paperback):
     Brett slowed their pace and the engine lowered to a bubbly growl as he expertly motored through the jungle of grass, his eyes on the bank, one hand on the rudder. It was like being Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart on the African Queen, she thought to herself.
    "Are we almost there, Mr. Allnut?"

Genre: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Length: 407 Pages (paperback)
Amazon Link: The Beach House
Author Website Link: Mary Alice Monroe

Synopsis:
Caretta Rutledge thought she’d left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother coming just as her own life is spinning out of control has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide “turtle lady” and renews old acquaintances long thought lost. But it is in reconnecting with her mother that she will learn life’s most precious lessons true love involves sacrifice, family is forever and the mistakes of the past can be forgiven.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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Shem Creek, A Lowcountry Tale - First Chapter/ First Paragraph and Teaser Tuesday

     I enjoy stories where the characters and their dialogue feel real, and that's the case with Shem Creek. Divorced mother Linda Breeland moves her two teenage daughters from New Jersey to the Low Country of South Carolina where she grew up. Her goal is to simplify her hectic and disappointing life and to provide a better environment for her children. Of course, her girls are not too thrilled about the change, and things are not as simple as Linda expected. 
     I enjoyed the distinct personalities of all the characters in this book: brash and sometimes outspoken Linda; her polite college-bound daughter Lindsay; her troublemaker fifteen-year-old daughter Gracie; and Linda's capable sister, Southern gentlewoman Mimi. The dialogue is crisp, modern, and each person has her own voice. I fell in love with these characters and wanted each of them to achieve their goals, and I had fun along the way. 

First Paragraph:
A Postcard From Linda
     Can I just tell you why I am so deliriously happy to drive all through the night from New Jersey to South Carolina? Here we are, boxed in between this wall of eighteen-wheelers on our left and right, in front and behind, in this little pocket of flying road, racing down I-95 at seventy-six miles an hour. My daughters are asleep beside me and in the backseat. I don't care that it's pouring rain. I don't care that it's dark. On another night, I would be terrified out of my skin by the blasting of horns. But not tonight. Let me tell you something. These trucks are like huge guardian angels rushing us to safety and the rain is washing us clean. Life has been a little rough around the edges and it was time to break out. Yeah. A little rough would be one way of understating it.

Teaser (from Page 153 in my paperback copy):
That was how we were. Our family preferred not to speak of things that were uneasy to hear. We would hem and haw around them like a patch of green stickers in the grass and we were barefoot children, unprepared for pain, unwilling to give pain a chance to teach us something.

Length: 365 Pages
Genre: Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Amazon Link: Shem Creek
Author Website: Dorothea Benton Frank
Shem Creek is Book Four in the Lowcountry Tales series, but it stands alone. It was first published in 2005. I have featured this author on my blog before: The Land of Mango Sunsets

Synopsis from Goodreads:
     Pat Conroy has called her books “hilarious and wise”, noting that they are “funny, sexy and usually damp with sea water.” Anne Rivers Siddons said of Sullivans Island that it “roared with life.” Now Dorothea Benton Frank takes us back to the Lowcountry to introduce a whole new cast of characters whose lives will surely move your heart.Linda Breland has no experience managing a restaurant, but then neither did Brad Jackson, and he owns the place.
     Meet Linda Breland, single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, who always held her younger sister in check, is leaving for college. And Gracie, her Tasmanian devil, is giving her nightmares. Linda’s personal life? Well, between the married men, the cold New Jersey winters, her pinched wallet and her ex-husband who marries a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is—let’s just say, Linda has seen enough to fill a thousand pages.
     As the story opens, she is barreling down Interstate 95, bound for Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the land of her ancestors. Welcomed by the generous heart of her advice dispensing sister, Mimi, Linda and her daughters slowly begin to find their way and discover a sweeter rhythm of life.
     And then there’s Brad Jackson, a former investment banker of Atlanta, Georgia who hires her to run his restaurant on Shem Creek. Like everyone else, Brad’s got a story of his own—namely an almost ex-wife, Loretta who is the kind of gal who gives women a bad name.
     The real protagonist of this story is the Lowcountry itself. The magical waters of Shem Creek, the abundant wildlife and the astounding power of nature give this tiny corner of the planet its infallible reputation as a place for introspection, contemplation and healing.
     As in all her previous work, you’ll find Shem Creek to be compulsively readable, irreverent but warm and blazingly authentic—and you’ll dread reaching the last page. It is her vivid writing, colorful characters and rich narrative that have made Dorothea Benton Frank one of our nation’s greatest storytellers. Shem Creek is a triumphant novel that proves we are all entitled to a second chance. The challenge is to learn how to recognize it when it comes and to know which chance to take.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

The Land of Mango Sunsets - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

     Charming, funny, delightful. Those are the best words I can find to describe The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank. I enjoy stories where the main character changes and grows, and that's what happens to Miriam in this book. But now that I think about it, she actually goes back to being her authentic self, which is even better.  
     I enjoyed Frank's descriptions of Sullivans Island, South Carolina, and her Southern voice. The description in the prologue is luscious! I'll read more books by this author. (Many thanks to my friend Nan for offering her collection to me.)

Beginning (Prologue):
     We called it the Land of Mango Sunsets. None of the old islanders knew what we meant by that, as they had only ever heard of mangoes. Bottled chutney perhaps, but that was about the sum total of their experience with a food that was so foreign. But I knew all about the romance of them from my earliest memories of anything at all. My parents had honeymooned in the South Pacific, which in those days was considered a little reckless, certainly titillating, and above all, highly exotic. Every morning they left their beds, still half dreaming, to find a tray outside the door of their bungalow. They would bring it behind the curtains of the mosquito netting and into their bed. Still in their nightclothes, my mother's hair cascading in tendrils and my father's young beard stubble scratching her young complexion, they would burn away the sour paste of morning breath with a plate of sliced mangoes, dripping with fleshy sweetness, a pot of strong tea, and a rack of toast. From then on, mangoes were equated with love, tenderness, and hopeful beginnings, and we spent our lives looking everywhere for other examples of them.

Teaser (from Page 266) - How does Miriam know her mother's death is near? She explains it this way:
     No, this was something particular in her eyes, not a light that was fading but as though her eyes were trying to memorize me, freeze-frame the moment, and tuck it away in the pocket of the gown she intended to wear into eternity. She would show my ancestors these pictures of her time spent in my family's life just like photographs of events of which she was especially proud or those that had given her something sublime that she had stolen away with her passing to share.

Amazon link: The Land of Mango Sunsets
Pages: 334 (trade paperback)
Genre: Women's Fiction
Author Website: Dorothea Benton Frank

Synopsis:
      Dorothea Benton Frank writes highly addictive tales of life's conundrums with hilarity and heat. Meet Miriam Elizabeth Swanson, in a full-blown snit, buoyed by a fabulous cast that runs the gamut from insufferable to wonderful. First is the arrival of Liz Harper, Miriam's tenant from Birmingham, who sets a new cycle in motion. Her other tenant, Kevin, stalwart companion with more style than Cary Grant, shakes Miriam out of her fog to see which battles are worth the fight. Then there's Miriam's estranged son, who announces he's marrying a Jamaican woman. And what about her ex-husband, Charles, and that sordid lingerie model of his? Finally, you'll laugh and cry when Miriam meets a man named Harrison who changes her into a gal named Mellie.
      Miriam spins out from the revolving door of her postured life as a Manhattan quasi-socialite while she thirsts, no, starves for recognition. It takes a few spins, dips, and one spectacular fall until Miriam gets her head on straight. Then in a whoosh she's off to the enchanted and mysterious land of Sullivans Island, deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
      Told straight from the heart in Frank's vivid, highly entertaining style,The Land of Mango Sunsets just might be her finest work to date. If you decide to read this book, don't make plans to do anything else for a while.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Beach House Memories - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

I'm halfway through Beach House Memories, and I'm enjoying it. The story takes place in 1974 on Isle of Palms in the Low Country of South Carolina. I'm completely immersed in the story of Lovie (married with two children) and the expectations placed on upper-class Southern women who grew up in the 1950s. And I'm also learning a lot about sea turtles! 

This book is the sequel to The Beach House (which is now on my to-read list). The book's beginning reads like a prologue.

Book Beginning:
Lovie Rutledge believed memories were like the tides. Sometimes they rushed in with a pounding roar to topple you over. At other times they gently washed over you, lulling you to complacency and then tugging you back to halcyon days that, with the passing of years, seemed ever sweeter.

Friday 56 (from Page 56 in my trade paperback):
Glancing at her watch, she realized it was not even ten o'clock and the children were asleep. Lowcountry summer days wore them plumb out. In one day's time their skin was as red as a lobster's from overcooking in the sun, and their lackluster expressions were replaced with the bright-eyed enthusiasm she always imagined Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn wore.

Genre: Literary Fiction / Women's Fiction / Environment
Length: 385 Pages
Amazon Link: Beach House Memories
More From This Author: Mary Alice Monroe's Website

Synopsis from Amazon:
      Autumn brings haunting beauty to the sun-soaked dunes on Isle of Palms, where Olivia “Lovie” Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage. As the seasons change, Lovie remembers one special summer… 
      In 1974, America is changing, but Charleston remains eternally the same. When Lovie married aristocratic, well-connected businessman Stratton Rutledge, she turned over her fortune and fate to his control. But she refused to relinquish one thing: her family’s old seaside cottage. Precious summers with her children on the barrier island are Lovie’s refuge from social expectations and her overbearing husband’s philandering. Here, she is the “Turtle Lady,” tending the loggerhead turtles that lay their eggs in the warm night sand and then slip back into the sea. 
      Then, in the summer of ’74, biologist Russell Bennett visits to research the loggerheads. Their shared interest brings them together, and soon it blooms into a passionate, profound love—forcing Lovie to face an agonizing decision. Stratton’s influence is far-reaching, and if she dares to dream beyond a summer affair, she risks losing her reputation, her wealth, even her children. 
      This emotional tale of a strong woman torn between duty and desire, between tradition and change, is an empowering journey through the seasons of self-discovery. Until this autumn, this time of winds and tides, of holding on and letting go…

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