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Summary
Summary
Ten years of family secrets, misunderstandings, and recriminations have kept the Tatternalls apart - until Josie, a military widow suddenly alerted to mortality when one of her best friends keels over during a bridge game, impulsively invites her three grown daughters home for the holidays at her gracious South Carolina bed-and-breakfast. Cam, Josie's eldest, is her father's daughter - headstrong, smart, fearless, and utterly hopeless when it comes to making peace with either her family or herself. Years ago, she acquired the cynical veneer born of living too long in New York City and watching her writerly dreams fade. Still reeling from a breakup with the man she loves, she heads south heartily skeptical of the comforts of home and hearth. For Cam, this will be a season of shocks and surprises. Lila, the poised and perfect stay-at-home mother of two, lives near Josie in Hilton Head and is experiencing the slow disintegration of her own essentially loveless marriage. She dreads the prospect of this family reunion - especially the return of her black sheep, brilliant older sister, Cam. Yet, astonishing even herself, this is the Christmas when Lila finally will rebel. Evie, the all-too-candid baby of the family, routinely shares her family's secrets in her advice column for a Savannah newspaper. But even Evie has never created a scene like the tableau she stages at this Christmas dinner - when she arrives on the arm of her latest love, a rich man old enough to be her father....
Author Notes
Lois Battle 's seven novels include Bed and Breakfast, Storyville, War Brides , and A Habit of the Blood , (all Penguin). She lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Battle's (Storyville) considerable storytelling gifts breathe life into what might well have become just one more novel about the estranged children of a dysfunctional Southern family. Josie Tatternall, the septuagenarian widow of an unfaithful martinet of an army officer and owner of a bed and breakfast in upscale Beaufort, S.C., is determined that all three of her daughters will be reunited for the upcoming Christmas holidays. That will be no easy task after years of real and imagined affronts among the siblings and their mother. A decade earlier, the eldest daughter, Camilla, had even vowed she'd never return home. But this year, Christmas looks so bleak for Camher job at a women's press is in jeopardy, her lover of three years has moved to Atlanta and she may be pregnantthat she reluctantly accepts her mother's invitation. Middle daughter Lila Gadsen, the "good girl" her mother can always count on, lives in nearby Hilton Head with her politician husband and two sullen teenagers and keeps a stash of Halcion and Percodan hidden in her designer kitchen. Beautiful Evie, who, her grandmother says, was "born dumb and had a relapse," lives in Savannah and writes a newspaper column that reveals a few too many family secrets. Despite Josie's best efforts, Christmas Eve is a disaster. It's another year and another Christmas season before Battle wraps up the loose ends and offers readers a true-love happy ending for a most surprising couple. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Battle (Storyville, 1993, etc.) gives ``home for the holidays'' an appealingly accomplished update as a very contemporary family gathers reluctantly for Christmas at their mother's southern B&B. Josie Tatternall had been a loyal military wife, taking care of the kids on her own, bravely moving a score of times, and never forgetting to wear white gloves when calling on the commander's wife. But the loyalty came at a price: Husband ``Bear'' was unfaithful, spent money on other women, and ruined his career by having an affair with the wife of a top officer. Once out of the service, the hard-drinking Bear has no choice but to go along with Josie's decision to move back to her hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina, and open a B&B. He dies soon after, and the couple's three daughters grow up and go their separate ways. Now in her 70s, Josie decides to get her children together again for Christmas. The three have quarrelled with one another, and, with one exception, their mother. Cam, her father's favorite, is an editor in New York; Lila has married a prosperous local man and plays the good-daughter role to the hilt; and Evie writes a Savannah newspaper column where she rehashes complaints about her family and her childhood. The sisters arrive, psychic baggage in hand, and immediately things fall apart. Cam quarrels with both Josie and Lila and leaves; Lila, jealous of Cam and bored with her husband, has an uncharacteristic fling; and Evie goes off with Lila's rich father-in-law, leaving Josie to pick up the pieces. In the year that follows, Josie, to her surprise, and despite a few tough phone calls, finds love and understanding with the girls. All those wistful and unrealistic hopes for family closeness at Christmas are detailed acutely in a literate, witty, and affectionate tale that's perfect to curl up with at home, or, better yet, in a B&B. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
Following the torrent of recent releases painting dysfunctional family portraits, many in Boschian detail, the author of Storyville (1992) offers up a poignant holiday snapshot. The story follows the Taternall clan through the frantic week before Christmas. Mother Josie, acutely aware of her advancing years, calls her three daughters home to spend the holidays in her sprawling South Carolina home (the bed and breakfast of the title). Cam, Josie's eldest, left home for New York at 18, determined to become a successful writer. Some three decades later, she is worried about cutbacks at the small feminist press where she's an editor, her man has taken a job in Atlanta, and her period is a week late. Middle sister Lila could be a poster child for suburban angst--her daughter is anorexic, her son is a belligerent slacker, and her politician husband is a weak-willed bore. Little Evie, still the baby at 40-plus, puts her inner child to work by using her fractured family and piteous love life as grist for her self-help column in a Savannah paper. A fifth family member, unseen but always present in the thoughts of the others, is Ted "Bear" Taternall, the hard-drinking, footloose soldier who swept Josie off her feet at the beginning of World War II. There are no heroes in this family drama, no villains either--just regular folks, drawn with sympathy and keen-eyed humor. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1996)0670860743June Vigor
Library Journal Review
In this well-crafted story by the author of Storyville (Viking, 1993), Josie Tatternall, a military widow in her seventies, is inspired by a friend's nearly fatal illness to call together her own three daughtersin particular, her estranged daughter, Cam, who has not been home since the death of her father years ago. What starts out as a family gathering for the twilight of Josie's life actually marks the beginning of her understanding of her achievements and, quite unexpectedly, her second chance at love. The story introduces a cast of memorable characters, primarily Josie herself, who fully reminds us that life, love, and growth are not limited to any particular age. Somewhat light reading, but a good story nonetheless.Susan C. Colegrove, Athens Regional Lib. System, Ga. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
