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Summary
Summary
America's first lady of storytelling takes up where her best-selling Bright Captivity left off, recreating life on a nineteenth-century plantation in the vivid, dramatic second volume of The Georgia Trilogy. From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
Eugenia Price, 1916 - 1996 Eugenia Price, born on June 22, 1916, was an American author best known for her historical novels which were set in the American South. Early in Price's writing career, she was a well-known author of many Christian books. While on St. Simons Island, she wandered through Christ Church cemetery where she found the graves of Anson Dodge, his wives Ellen and Anna, and his child. She wanted to take her writing in a different direction and the graves inspired her to write biographies about average people who only impacted those around them. The result was "Beloved Invader," the post Civil War story of the Reverend Anson Dodge. This first book about St. Simons Island, where she spent time in a cottage researching the Island families, created a new genre. She followed with "Lighthouse" and "New Moon Rising," which went back in time from the Civil War.
Price used everything that she wrote, such as articles she wrote for Coastal Illustrated, which were collected and published as "At Home on St. Simons," and the diary she kept while working on a novel became "Diary of a Novel." She also wrote the Savannah quartet, with the final novel titled "Stranger in Savannah." It's a love story that takes place during the time that the country was heading towards the Civil War. Her last book, which was finished a few weeks before her death, was "The Waiting Time."
On May 28, 1996, Eugenia Price died of congestive heart failure and was laid to rest in the Christ Church Cemetery.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Price's 38th novel is like molasses--treacly and slow. The second book in the Georgia Trilogy that began with Bright Captivity follows the nearly charmed life of John and Anne Couper Fraser from 1825, when the couple leaves London to return to Anne's (and Price's) home on Georgia's St. Simons Island, to 1839. Surrounded by the natural beauty of the family's coastal plantation, John overcomes his abhorrence of slavery to become a respected planter. He and Anne adore each other, raise their children and ponder the problems that seem to plague everyone but them. Late in the tale, friendship with the English actress/abolitionist Fanny Kemble Butler causes Anne to consider for the first time the moral implications of her lifestyle. When tragedy finally touches her, faith and the support of her children provide Anne with the fortitude to carry on. While Price's simplistic storytelling skills have sufficed in previous novels, this one disappoints: the characters that really bring it to life, the Butlers, appear too little and too late. Tedious pacing and insufficient dramatic action make this a saccharine narrative unredeemed by Price's obvious feeling for her characters and their milieu. Doubleday and Christian Herald Book Clubs. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Those in the author's longtime and considerable following will be eagerly awaiting this second book (after Bright Captivity, 1991) in the trilogy concerned with the fortunes of the Coupers, Frasers, and other prime families of Georgia's St. Simons Island in the early 19th century. (The Frasers et al. did truly exist--in her cheerfully discursive afterword, Price offers a cemetery tour.) But others--those not of the Price fan-club persuasion--may find the 600-plus pages of expository converse, with sentimental postures, more than a bit wearying in spite of the careful research concerning the area's history. The story, set in St. Simons from 1825 to 1839, is mainly of the devoted marriage of Anne Couper and John Fraser, their children and relatives: Anne's parents, her brilliant brother, James; John's brother, Dr. William; and a visiting Scots cousin, Willy. Accompanying the latter to the States is English actress Fanny Kemble, an ardent abolitionist, whose handsome, shallow husband will come to own a plantation nearby. Meanwhile, slavery is much on the minds of everyone. John's hatred of slavery almost diverts him from a career as a planter; others, like Anne's father, have twinges of unease, but that's all, while Anne wonders whether her ``friend,'' the half-white (this is emphasized) slave Eve, could really be a friend in spite of her protestations of devotion (``She be my life''). Emotions all around are slowly sauteéd: Anne worries that John won't be happy as a planter; Willy carries a torch for Anne; there are marriages and sad buryings; then a steamer explodes, and a murder is committed offstage. Events here do unfold slowly, but, worse, there seems to be no inner animation behind the stilled speech. Strictly for the large following--a picture (postcard) perfect view of plantation life on beautiful St. Simons Island.
Booklist Review
Price draws from the family history of the Coupers of St. Simon's Island in coastal Georgia for her wordy historical fiction. As this second volume in the Georgia Trilogy opens, Scotsman John Fraser travels to the home of his American-born wife to start a new career on her father's plantation. A military man by disposition and experience, Fraser never truly reconciles himself to the role of slave owner, although his skills as a farmer grow each year, despite natural and man-made disasters. The Fraser family grows as well, from one child to five. Price's appealing story is filled with mishaps, romance, and colorful period detail. As she explains in her epilogue, the closing volume of the trilogy will be Beauty from Ashes and have a Civil War setting. Fans will also enjoy her memoir, Inside One Author's Heart , which tells of the celebration of Eugenia Price Day on St. Simon's Island. (Reviewed Mar. 15, 1993)0385267029Denise Perry Donavin
