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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
Miriam Swanson is thoroughly provoked and she doesn't mind letting you know. Twenty years ago her husband Charles, a powerful attorney with one of the last remaining white shoe law firms in New York, dumped her for a younger woman nearly half her age. Obviously it happens all the time and it's not exactly news, but what's fascinating is to watch Miriam evolve from pathetic to spectacular. Perfectly proper Miriam's great metamorphosis results from the arrival of a little red neck school teacher, Liz, from Nowhere, Alabama. Liz is Miriam's tenant along with Kevin, a 50 something gay man who is Miriam's best friend. Liz is everything that Miriam is not: young and thin. They constantly clash. Then finally, she meets a man named Harrison who changes her into a gal named Mellie.
Miriam spins out from the revolving door of her postured life as a Manhattan quasi socialite while she thirsts, no, starves for recognition. How did she become what she hates the most and what does she endure to realize it? And where are the answers? It takes a few spins, dips and one spectacular fall until Miriam gets her head on straight. Then in a whoosh she's off to see her mother in the enchanted and mysterious land of Sullivans Island, deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
Author Notes
Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Lowcountry Tales Series which includes the books Sullivan's Island and Plantation. Her title's have often made the Best Seller List such as: Porch Lights, The Last Original Wife, The Hurricane Sisters, All the Single Ladies, All Summer Long, Return to Sullivans Island, and Same Beach, Next Year.
Dorothea Olivia Benton was born on Sept. 12, 1951, on Sullivan¿s Island. Her father, William, died when she was 4; her mother, Dorothea Cecilia Blanchard, was a homemaker who raised her children with the two men she married after Mr. Benton¿s death. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of America in Atlanta, she became a buyer for Kerrison¿s Department Store in Charleston and then an executive for a sportswear line in New York and San Francisco. After marrying Mr. Frank, an investment banker, in 1983, she left the fashion industry, had two children and raised money for various charities. She Shifted to writing novels because it suited her storytelling style. She was soon turning out a book a year. Dorothea Benton Frank passed away on September 2, 2019 at the age of 67.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A middle-aged woman's self-discovery is predictable but not pedestrian in Frank's (Full of Grace; Pawleys Island) latest. A divorce has stalled Miriam Swanson's life: her snooty Herm?s-swathed Manhattan friends abandoned her after her ex-husband "ran off with his whore"; one of her grown sons keeps her at arm's length, while her other son, a "nice nerd," stays beneath the family radar for months at a time; and the major drawback to her job at a museum is her boss-icy former friend Agnes Willis. In a twist that stretches disbelief, Miriam catches Agnes's husband, Truman, having a noisy rendezvous with Liz, the cute new tenant in Miriam's townhouse. After a brief interlude that sends Miriam to a South Carolina barrier island to visit her former cotillion queen mother-and meet the dreamy local Harrison Ford ("Not that wimpy actor")-Miriam reveals Truman's affair, with consequences that fuel the remainder of the book. Frank's narrative is heavy on healing-physically, mentally-and the importance of family, and though her sometimes delightfully nasty heroine is sympathetic, supporting cast members have one note apiece. This isn't Frank's finest, but it'll sate her fans. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Even Miriam Elizabeth Swanson's mother describes her as a fussbudget who is stubborn, unrealistic in her expectations of others, and a prig. Here she gets to tell her own story of life as a lonely divorcee estranged from her grown sons, living in New York City with a gay tenant and an African Gray parrot, and begging for assignments on charity committees. On a visit to the family cottage on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina, she is shocked by her socialite mother's new hippie lifestyle of growing organic vegetables, raising goats and chickens, and no longer dying her hair. But it takes an accident and an act of violence to force Miriam to alter her own life, which means returning to the island to learn to relax and love again. New York Times best-selling author Frank (Sullivan's Island) uses a great deal of humor to tell the story of a woman desperate for change and paints beautiful word pictures of the Low Country. Although some of the characters are stereotypes and others are not fleshed out enough, this is still a memorable book that should be in all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/07.]--Lesa M. Holstine, Glendale P.L., AZ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Land of Mango Sunsets A Novel Chapter One Manhattan--Some Time Ago Dear Ms. O'Hara, Your father was such a lovely man and this tragic loss will be felt by everyone who knew him for years to come. In my mind's eye, I can still see him cleaning my grill with a vengeance. That man surely did love a clean grill. Please accept my deepest and most sincere condolences. There is the small matter of his rent for the month of January. Not wanting to be an additional burden at this terribly sensitive time, I will simply deduct it from his security deposit. Although I am loath to broach this subject, I must notify you that the timely removal of his personal property will obviously impact the amount of money I am able to return to you. Once again, please accept my profound sympathy. Cordially, Miriam Elizabeth Swanson Making my way across Sixty-first Street, I checked that the stamp was secure and slipped the envelope in a mailbox. The weather was fast changing from cold and damp to a bone-chilling arctic freeze. My snow boots were tucked in my PBS member's canvas tote bag, just in case. I knew it was not very chic to be traipsing around Manhattan with a canvas tote bag. But the proud logo sent a message to all those people who enjoyed the benefits of Public Television but felt no compunction to support it even with the smallest of donations. The fact that people took without giving irked me. On the brighter side, I had always thought it would be great fun to be a volunteer in their phone bank during a campaign, to sit up there doing something so worthwhile as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, looked on. I had submitted my name as a candidate for the job many times, but I had never been called. Perhaps I should have sent them a more thorough bio with a more flattering photograph. Something youthful. Ah, me. Another disappointment. Another rejection. But what member of the human race didn't have unfulfilled little fantasies? Chin up, Miriam, I told myself, and trudged on. The weather continued to deteriorate and Charles Dickens himself would have agreed that it was a perfect day for a funeral. Bulbous gray clouds lowered toward the earth and covered every inch of the sky. They were closing in and threatening to burst. It would surely pour snow or sleet at any moment. There was nothing I could do about the weather or my feelings of gloom brought on by a claustrophobic sky. After all these years in New York, I was as resigned to winter as I was to any number of things that fed my love/hate relationship with the city. Anyway, where else was I to go? Live with my sons? No way. Live with my mother? Not in a million years. I adjusted my muffler to protect my cheeks. At least I had written Ms. O'Hara a note, and despite the inclement conditions, I had been sure to get it in the mail. I couldn't help but pause to think there was something so lazy about people who abandoned fountain pens or pens of any kind in favor of the expeditiousness of e-mail on any and every occasion. Including expressions of sympathy. Believe it or not, I actually heard a story of someone receiving an e-mail telling of a close friend's death. Including a frowning emoticon, God save us. The reason I remember was that it was so completely absurd to me. And speaking of fountain pens, they now had a disposable variety available at all those office-supply chain stores, which to me defeated the purpose of using a fountain pen in the first place. Wasn't it about holding a beautiful object in your hands and feeling its solid weight? Its worth and the importance of its history? Remember when penmanship was taught in the classroom and its beautiful execution was prized? But that is what the world has come to. Quick this and disposable that. To my dying day, I would remain a lonely standard-bearer in a world that continued to toss aside every inch of civility we have ever known. Handwritten notes seemed to have gone the way of corsages--their existence was rare. It just was the way it was. I hurried along to the funeral service, tiptoeing inside the church and finding my seat next to my dearest friend and other tenant, Kevin Dolan. "I have always loved St. Bartholomew's," I whispered to him. I removed my coat and gloves and, as inconspicuously as possible, settled in the pew. The service had already begun and I regretted the fact that I was late, even if it was only by a few minutes. In the steamer trunk of middle age, folded, packed, and wrinkled with one physical and emotional insult after another, perimenopause had delivered a measure of intolerance, even toward myself. "Me, too," Kevin whispered back, and sighed. "Poor Mr. O'Hara. Whoever thought he would just drop dead on the crosstown bus? Just like that! Poof. Gone." He popped his wrist in front of him in a gesture that equated Mr. O'Hara's death with a magician's now you see it, now you don't! "Hush," whispered someone in front of us. We paused in silence in deference to the occasion and then couldn't resist continuing our recap of the fragile nature of life in the Big Apple. That was the effect Kevin always had on me. In his presence I became a young gossiping washwoman, emphasis on young. "Pockets picked and ID stolen," I added at a carefully calibrated low volume of clear displeasure. "Disgusting!" "Five days in the city morgue ? Dreadful! If I hadn't called his family . . ." "He's lucky he wasn't eaten by rats. Thank heavens for dental records . . ." "Who could believe he went to a dentist with his snaggleteeth?" Kevin said. "Please. He was my . . ." said the woman in front of us, her shoulders racking with sobs. The Land of Mango Sunsets A Novel . Copyright © by Dorothea Frank. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank, Dorothea B. Frank All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.