The Front Porch Sisters

In the summer of 1956, the same year the novel Peyton Place unleashed to the world the notion that every woman is a sexual being, two spinster sisters realize it is just a matter of time before they end up in the Mt. Horeb Cemetery, remembered only as the Donnelly sisters of Pinetta, Florida, who never married.

Essie, at thirty-three years old and the caretaker of her older sister, Jewell, refuses to wither away in loneliness while she sits slap-dab in the middle of their three hundred acre farm.

At daylight one morning, she pulls out an old detour sign from the barn and drags it to the end of the farm lane onto the Bellville road. And waited. In no time, unsuspecting travelers are lured to the Donnelly’s front porch and the irresistible charm of the spinster sisters.

Their front porch overflows with laughter, gossip and tears, along with the answers to some long-held mysteries. In a twist of fate, a prison escapee, a handsome lawyer, an old woman with dementia and a one-armed black man and his goat decide the Donnelly farm is exactly where they are supposed to be.

From the moment the first slice of the Donnelly sisters’ famous buttered rum pound cake is cut and served, the folks who live in Pinetta are reminded of the value of friendship and the importance of community.