North and South

Two Carolina authors deliver long-awaited new novels

REVIEWS BY LINDA STANKARD

Like a rejuvenating spring breeze, new novels from two exceptional Southern writers make their long-anticipated appearance this month. For Kaye Gibbons, whose debut, Ellen Foster, was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, Divining Women is her first novel since 1999. For Anne Rivers Siddons, who counts Up Island and Low Country among the 14 previous titles to her credit, Islands is her first since 2000. Both are best-selling authors whose works are often infused with the charm and flavor of the Carolinas. Here again the two women immerse their fascinating novels in the setting they know best. Gibbons' atmospheric Divining Women takes place in World War I-era North Carolina, while Siddons' heartwarming Islands is set in modern-day South Carolina.

Female bonding

Darker than Gibbons' previous novels, Divining Women evolves into an almost gothic tale as the somewhat naïve and unsuspecting young Mary Oliver heads south from Washington, D.C., to Elm City, North Carolina, in the autumn of 1918 to be a companion for her pregnant aunt, Maureen. Because the war has interrupted Mary's plans to study abroad, her mother thinks this experience will enrich her. "These next months of your life will always be a blessing," she says, unaware that her brother, Troop, is a pretentious, cruel man who has not only abused his wife emotionally, but subjected her to excruciating "cures" for her "melancholy."

As a bond of trust develops between niece and aunt, Maureen begins to awaken from her self-protective stupor and realize the full extent of Troop's crimes against her. The tension mounts as Maureen's confidence builds, Mary becomes more outspoken, and Troop, in reaction to the threat to his power, attempts to tighten his stranglehold over the women even further. In spite of being isolated, Mary and Maureen become connected to other female family members and friends through letters, and that connection, that safety net, that encouragement to grab onto life, so skillfully handled in Gibbons' lyrical style, renders the tortuous experience a blessing after all. "This house is full of women," Maureen says cryptically. "They come and go like nothing you have ever seen."


Creating a family

Interestingly, though the two books tell very different stories, Islands is also a novel with the theme of connection at its core. Siddons' protagonist, Anny Butler, is 35 and devoted to her work as director of a "part federally, part privately funded sort of clearinghouse for services for needy children." When she totes a frightened, clubfooted child through the pouring rain to Dr. Lewis Aiken's Orthopedic Clinic, she's unaware that this action will change her life. Siddons' rich prose and trademark capacity for evoking time and place is evident as Anny describes that afternoon as "humid and punishing as spring can often be in the Carolina Low Country, when the air felt like thick, wet steam and the smell of the pluff mud from the marshes around Charleston stung in nostrils and permeated clothes and hair."

Anny eventually marries Lewis, and their union is a happy and fulfilling one, but it is being accepted into the "Scrubs," a group of childhood friends (all of whom became involved in the medical industry in some way—hence the name "Scrubs") and their spouses who share a beach house on idyllic Sullivan's Island, which gives her a true sense of family. Although each couple has their own additional residence, the beach house is where they all meet as often as they can, and where Anny feels she truly "lives." Like the unpredictable storms that lash the island, life too unleashes tragedy and devastation on the group, challenging the remark by the group's most faithful member, Camilla Curry, who vows "the center will hold."

Devoted readers and new fans alike are sure to appreciate these two Southern authors who have once again delivered, with their individually distinct flair and flourish, lush and engrossing tales.


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