Dorothea Benton Frank

"Best friends since the first day of classes at The College of Charleston, Ashley Anne Waters and Mary Beth Smythe, now 23 years old, live in Ashley's parents' beach house rent-free. Ashley is a gallery assistant who aspires to become an artist. Mary Beth, a gifted cook from Tennessee, works for a caterer while searching for a good teaching job. Though they both know what they want out of life, their parents barely support their dreams and worry for...

A Sullivan's Island beekeeper navigates her demanding hypochondriac mother and flamboyant rival sister while immersing herself in the lives of two young neighbor boys and their widowed father.

Still spry at ninety-three, Theodora has lived long enough to see her family grow into an insufferable bunch of truculent knuckleheads. Having finally gathered the whole bickering brood together for the holidays at her South Carolina home, the grand matriarch pines wistfully for those extravagant, homey Christmases of her childhood. How she misses the tables groaning with home-cooked goodies, the over-the-top decorations, those long, lovely fireside...

"Inspired by the title Dorothea Benton Frank planned for her next book--Reunion Beach--these close friends and colleagues channeled their creativity, admiration, and grief into stories and poems that celebrate this ... woman and her abiding love for the Lowcountry of her native South Carolina--a land of beauty, history, charm, and Gullah magic she ... brought to life in her acclaimed novels"--