Low Country
A Novel
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Caroline AubreyVenable"Fans wil find some familiar has everything her Southern heritage promised: money, prestige, a rich husband. If she drinks a little too much and her n20-year marrige to successful land developer Clay seems a little empty, well she's doing what she was born to do: be the chatelain of a magnificent home and a hostess to her husband's wealthy friends and perspective clients.aHer numbing routine of country -club luncheons, cocktail parties, and increasing isolation is interrupted, however, when Carolinefinds out that her tycoon husband plans to build a resort on a beautiful untouched island in South Carolina's low country. The island is a quiet haven, rich in low country history and meaningful memories from Caroline's youth. But most important to Caroline , his plans will mean the devastastion of a band of wild ponies that roam freely across the island. Spurred to action and inspired with new purpose, Caroline must confront the llife she has been leading and reach deep within herself to save this special place of her past, and ultimately, make a meaningful life for herself.aSiddons at her best, Low Country is a story of personal renewal and transformation, when one woman's proper Old South upbrimnging collides with the New South's runaway prosperity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Siddons heroine of a familiar stripe, Caroline Aubrey Venable battles adversity and despair to save her South Carolina island in a somewhat unwieldy novel that again shows us a woman maturing under pressure. The death of her daughter five years earlier still shadows Caroline's life, and her occasional overindulgence in alcohol is something neither she nor her husband of 25 years will discuss--so long as Caroline continues dutifully to play "mother superior" to the junior partners of her husband Clay's land-developing empire. When rumor comes to light that Clay's company plans to turn their low country home into a theme park--threatening the wild ponies that Caroline loves, not to mention the Gullahs who have lived there for centuries--Caroline is roused from her stupor. The leisurely pace and evocative atmospheric background of Siddons's fiction are in evidence here, and the confiding tone of this first-person narrative of betrayal and redemption offers few surprises. Some readers, however, may find Caroline annoyingly self-absorbed; may question why she doesn't object more strenuously when Luis Cassells--one of the islanders--characterizes Clay as "Mengele"; may find Siddons's depiction of Luis as a Cuban-Jewish Don Quixote improbable; may take umbrage at Caroline's patronization of the Gullahs; and may agree that the climax, while surprising, makes for a pat denouement. $250,000 ad/promo; U.K. rights to Little, Brown; first serial and dramatic rights: Virginia Barber; audio rights: HarperAudio; translation rights: HarperCollins; author tour.
