The Queen of the Lowcountry tells a tale about a Queen Bee and her daughters.
Alright, Dorothea Benton Frank has been a "never miss" author for me since I discovered her in 2003. She had been discovered many years prior; I just hadn't received the memo. My all-time favorite book of hers is Plantation, and Sullivan's Island is a very close second. (There is a scene in that one that was so funny I got kicked out of bed for laughing).
Anyway, she's written another one, and this one seems like a contender for the favorite spot. You have a mother who is a "hulk of a woman" who drives her daughter Holly insane. Holly escapes by tending her bees and living a quiet life on Sullivan's Island trying not to poke the bear that is her mother. Leslie, the other daughter, learned early that the only way to escape her mother was to actually escape, so she got married and moved away, shunning island life.
But Leslie comes back, and Holly now has to tend to her mother, and her sister, who is her polar opposite. And meanwhile, next door, a drama is unfolding that will envelop both Holly and Leslie while their mother, the most fantastic hypochondriac this side of the Mississippi, "ups her game in an uproarious and theatrical downward spiral."
Holly might very well lose her mind, so she turns to her bees, "Frank brings us back to her beloved island with an unforgettable story where the Lowcountry magic of the natural world collides with the beat of the human heart."
