Folly Beach: A Lowcountry Tale ~ Dorothea Benton Frank

Folly Beach: A Lowcountry Tale
By Dorothea Benton Frank

I must admit that I’m only a little more than halfway through this book but I have been enjoying it and I wanted to share one of my favorite authors, Dorothea Benton Frank. What I love best about her books are their great sense of place, Carolina Lowcountry, and the vivid characters. Folly Beach does not disappoint.

Cate Cooper’s husband has recently committed suicide, leaving her to face the lies that their life was built upon – a house mortgaged to the hilt, incredible debt, a business that is pretty well sunk and a child by another woman. Cate finds out that even her engagement ring diamond is a fake. She decides to go back to the Lowcountry of South Carolina, to Folly’s Beach. Aunt Daisy, who practically raised her, is in need of a little help herself.

A couple things did bother me with this book. Early on, the narrator recalls, “We were gathered in the most inclement conditions February in New Jersey could offer to bury Addison, my husband of too many years.”

No, you weren’t, because the most severe conditions available in February would be a blizzard and you definitely wouldn’t be in a cemetery burying someone under those circumstances. You might not be on any other day in February. The ground is usually rather frozen and the deceased is often kept in storage until the ground can be dug for burial.

Perhaps we could put this down to the character’s tendency to dramatize but I don’t feel like that’s established on page 7 or that it is ever that severe again. I’d say it’s a matter of someone writing about a setting they aren’t very familiar with. Disconcerting but the premise was interesting, so I kept going and thankfully she moves South to familiar territory very soon.

The other minor problem I had was that the story is told in alternating chapters. One chapter is told from Cate’s perspective and the next is told from the imagined perspective of a play Cate writes about Dorothy Heyward. (Cate ends up staying in the house where Dorothy and Dubose Heyward once lived on Folly Beach in South Carolina and becomes very interested in them.) I enjoyed the two lines of story equally but found it a bit distracting, or perhaps annoying would be more accurate, to flip back and forth. It might not have bothered me so much if my reading wasn’t already disjointed by the pockets of time I have to read. I only get to read two chapters at a time and so I never get to read much of each story line in one sitting.

These are minor details though and haven't kept me from reading and enjoying Folly Beach. I also did a little checking on the Porgy House, where so much of the action takes place that it almost becomes another character. I came across an article from the Charleston Post and Courier which describes the Porgy House and shows photographs after it was purchased and restored in the late 90's. (Porgy House Available for Tours on Folly Beach) I do love it when history comes to life.

I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed each of Dorothea Benton Frank’s books equally, or that this is even my favorite, but the characters are always engaging and the setting is usually vividly depicted in her Lowcountry books. I’d highly recommend her first, Sullivan’s Island, but all of the books are stand alones. They are addicting, dramatic and highly entertaining – the best of Chick Lit. Not quite a soap opera, more like a girlfriend telling you ALL about her life.