Folly Beach by Dorothea B. Frank
I've been to the beach in South Carolina many times and love it there. Plus I was in the mood for some good summer fluff. So I picked up Folly Beach by Dorothea Frank. I made it to the end but was kind of disappointed.
The book basically tells 2 overlapping stories. One is of Cate, whose husband commits suicide and leaves her penniless. She moves back to Folly Beach, SC where the aunt who raised her and her sister still lives. The other story involves DuBose and Dorothy Heywood, who wrote the book Porgy, on which Gershwin's Porgy & Bess is based
--and who indeed worked with Gershwin on Porgy and Bess. Cate is living in their old house on Folly Beach and is quite taken with their story.
It should have worked better than it did. I liked the parts with Cate and her sister Patti as well as the parts with Cate, her aunt, and her aunt's long-time partner, Ella. And the stories about the Heywoods and Gershwin were kind of interesting. But when Cate meets John, a handsome professor, she turns into a giddy 12-year-old girl with a crush on the high school football captain. For goodness sake, the woman is a widow with grown children who has had to totally reinvent her life and she's giggling and blushing like a goofy girl? It didn't ring true.
So while I did like parts of the book, I can't really say I'd recommend it.
The book basically tells 2 overlapping stories. One is of Cate, whose husband commits suicide and leaves her penniless. She moves back to Folly Beach, SC where the aunt who raised her and her sister still lives. The other story involves DuBose and Dorothy Heywood, who wrote the book Porgy, on which Gershwin's Porgy & Bess is based
--and who indeed worked with Gershwin on Porgy and Bess. Cate is living in their old house on Folly Beach and is quite taken with their story.
It should have worked better than it did. I liked the parts with Cate and her sister Patti as well as the parts with Cate, her aunt, and her aunt's long-time partner, Ella. And the stories about the Heywoods and Gershwin were kind of interesting. But when Cate meets John, a handsome professor, she turns into a giddy 12-year-old girl with a crush on the high school football captain. For goodness sake, the woman is a widow with grown children who has had to totally reinvent her life and she's giggling and blushing like a goofy girl? It didn't ring true.
So while I did like parts of the book, I can't really say I'd recommend it.
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