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Summary
Summary
When we first meet Tessie Lockhart in 1958, she is pinning her hair into a French twist, dabbing Jean Naté on her wrists, and getting ready to change her life. This widowed mother of a thirteen-year-old has decided it's time for a fresh start for both of them, time to leave behind Carbondale, Illinois, and the pain of loss. Tessie and her daughter move to Gainesville, Florida, where they discover that they aren't the only ones struggling to move forward in the wake of tremendous grief.
Betsy Carter has perfectly captured both the innocence of the 1950s, when even the complex events of our lives seemed somehow easier to endure, and the startling and irreversible changes of the 1960s. A story about the relationships people develop in the face of loss, The Orange Blossom Special introduces us to a remarkable cast of characters, all of whom are tested--and transformed--by the changes in their midst.
In her own touching and funny style, Carter shows us the unexpected ways in which strangers can become family.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The title of Carter's sympathetic if somewhat contrived debut novel (she's the author of a memoir, Nothing to Fall Back On) refers to the first New York-to-Miami passenger train, a not-so-subtle metaphor for the American dream and the forward march of history, as the story hurtles from the late '50s and into the '80s. In 1958, comely widow Tessie Lockhart and her seventh-grade daughter, Dinah, uproot from Carbondale, Ill., to Gainesville, Fla., driven by a very American faith in the healing power of a fresh start. There, their lives intertwine with those of Gainesville's powerful Landy family, as Dinah's popular classmate Crystal Landy and her solemn older brother, Charlie, befriend Dinah. When the Landys' house burns down, killing their father, Dinah and Crystal form a special bond, speaking "the same language of loss" across the divide of class and social status. Even Tessie and supercilious matriarch Victoria Landy cement a rocky friendship, and over the years, a tumultuous love blossoms between Dinah and Charlie. Carter's plot skips lightly over the passing decades, which are marked by periodic eruptions of changing culture. Each incident of racial strife or Vietnam tragedy feels forced and representative, though, and as the novel barrels into the late-20th century like the titular locomotive, Carter sacrifices character development in her reach for historical import. Agent, Kathy Robbins. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
From journalist/memoirist Carter (Nothing to Fall Back On, 2002), a sweet debut novel about a young widow and her daughter who move to Florida in 1958, searching for warm weather and a new life. Tessie Lockhart looks like Joanne Woodward, works in a dress shop in Carbondale, Ill., and talks daily to her husband Jerry, who's been dead for two and a half years. When a letter arrives from school alerting her to teenaged daughter Dinah's unhappiness, Tessie--whose own formula for getting through the day requires cigarettes and a half bottle of Almaden--pulls out an atlas and decides on Gainesville as the place to start over. The town proves to be a hotbed of charming eccentrics, so our heroines fit right in. Dinah, who thinks her father is communicating with her through an odd classmate called Eddie Fingers, becomes best friends with rich girl Crystal Landy, whose beautiful and amusingly self-indulgent mother has an eye for the young Cuban girl in the local hair salon. Crystal's brother, Charlie, has psychic powers known only to their housekeeper, a woman devoted to Jesus and the novels of Harold Robbins. Tessie lands a receptionist job and a lover: Barone Antonucci, a suave, older, well-to-do man with a hopelessly incapacitated wife. Barone's presence, however, is cleared by Jerry, whom Tessie consults by writing notes, putting them in a small cedar box (aptly named the "Jerry Box") and waiting for a sign. Silly as it all seems, life in Gainesville has its serious moments. As the '50s move into the '60s, the town and the characters undergo changes wrought by history (the Vietnam War, integration) and personal experience (the Landy house burns down, Dinah and Charlie fall in difficult love, Tessie becomes pregnant with Barone's child). But at the close, all the ends are tied up, albeit in a decidedly crooked bow. Odd mix of styles and themes, but nonetheless an endearing portrait of a place and time. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Justly praised for her candid, humorous memoir, Nothing to Fall Back On (2002), magazine writer and editor Carter tries her hand at fiction in this affecting tale of widow Tess and her daughter, Dinah, who relocate to Gainesville, Florida, in 1958. They are soon virtually adopted by the wealthy Landy family, which includes pampered mom Victoria; teenager Charlie, who has the gift of second sight; and overweight, sassy seventh-grader Crystal. As the Landys help to ease their transition into southern small-town culture, Tess lands a good job and finds love with a jai alai mogul, and Dinah finds her soul mate in Charlie. Over the next two decades, they must all confront the changes brought on by Victoria's new business venture and Crystal's distress over Dinah and Charlie's relationship. The plot of this first novel seems overly thin at times, and the transitions between decades are sometimes too abrupt; yet there's no denying that the characters, drawn with fresh, often idiosyncratic detail, are instantly engaging. A light, funny read that also offers a distinctive sense of place. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2005 Booklist