The Secret to Southern Charm

Kristy Woodson Harvey’s latest novel, The Secret to Southern Charm, is the second in her Peachtree Bluff series. In this satisfying sequel to Slightly South of Simple, Kristy continues her tale of three generations of women — fifty-something Ansley, her elderly mother, and Ansley’s trio of adult daughters, each at a crossroads in her life.

While Kristy’s last book focused on Caroline, the eldest, readers were left reeling from the news that middle daughter, Sloane, has just received — Sloane’s husband is MIA in Iraq.

We begin to learn more about Sloane and her marriage. We enter the precarious universe of the military spouse. Unable to face what seems inevitable, Sloane struggles to hang onto hope that her beloved Adam is still alive.

With two young children to care for, she does the best she can, cosseted in the cozy coastal town of Peachtree Bluff, Georgia, where family can help her through this excruciating time.

But Sloane’s is not the only painful situation the family is going through; Emerson, the youngest, isn’t quite herself. Caroline is still working through issues with a once-wandering spouse. Each of these women is confronting secrets, not the least of which is Ansley’s — a secret she fears will always stand in the way of her own happiness. How she handles revealing her secret, if she ever does, could make or break her relationships with her much-loved daughters.

While many sequels disappoint, this one most assuredly does not. In addition to plot twists that keep the reader guessing, one of the most striking elements of Kristy’s novels is her perceptive handling of each generation’s point of view, accomplished with poignancy and humor. As a woman of Ansley’s age, I am struck by how impeccably Kristy depicts the bittersweet nature of our middle years — what it is like loving adult children, facing the mortality of aging parents, and dealing with the complex, increasingly proximate aspects of loss as time marches on. We don’t speak of loss much in American society, and rare are those moments when storytelling captures loss in an integrative way. To say that a delicate touch is required is an understatement, and Kristy delivers just that with both honesty and tenderness.

If these portraits of interesting, imperfect, and inspiring “ordinary” women succeed — and they do — it is because Kristy is the consummate storyteller. Her characters are beautifully drawn, with traits we can admire and peccadilloes we shake our heads at. Her mastery of dialog draws us into important scenes with remarkable finesse. And she moves her readers by addressing universal themes that each of us will encounter in our lives — the need to make tough choices and live with the consequences, the desire to redress mistakes if we possibly can, and the struggle to give and receive love.

Like Kristy’s other novels, The Secret to Southern Charm is more than a love story, more than a story of mothers and daughters, more than a portrayal of three sisters. It is a testament to the fierce, resilient, conflicted, compromised, complicated, and ultimately rich emotional lives that so many women lead. And as a woman, Kristy’s words will have you nodding and grinning and tearing up, recognizing moments in your own life as it was, as it is, or as you might wish it to be.

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Kristy Woodson Harvey is the author of Dear Carolina, Lies and Other Acts of Love, and Slightly South of Simple. She blogs at Design Chic about how creating a beautiful home can be the catalyst for creating a beautiful life and loves connecting with readers at KristyWoodsonHarvey.com. She is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism and holds a Master’s in English from East Carolina University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and websites, including Southern Living, Domino magazine, Our State, Houzz, the Salisbury Post and the New Bern Sun Journal. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and five-year-old son where she is working on her next novel.
 
For more information on ordering Kristy’s books, visit her author pages at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and elsewhere.

Images reproduced with permission of Kristy Woodson Harvey.

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