Southern Secrets - Softcover

McFather, Nelle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312950233 ISBN 13: 9780312950231

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

As the beautiful Tally Malone embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of her past, her love for two men--media mogul Cane Winslow and Georgia gentleman Nick Cantrell--could tear several families apart. Reprint.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

A wisteria-hung family mess, set in Georgia on an island ``filled with the smell of musk...humid, hot, sweaty, wet musk''-- in which a put-upon Cinderella gets to the big ballroom of Love and Career. This is author McFather's first appearance in hardcover. Mean, mean Lucy Cantrell, whose deceased father had whipped the land out from under the aristocratic tootsies of heiress Genevieve Fountaine, seems to have it in for 12-year-old Tally, Genevieve's daughter. Destitute Genevieve, now married to a Bible- thumper, is ailing, and Tally must act as maid to Miss Lucy and her mild-mannered husband, Harm. Also visiting is 28-year-old Cane Winslow, Lucy's stepbrother, who falls for Tally and can hardly wait for her to grow up. Years sweat on, and Tally does grow up, but then come troubles. Genevieve shoots her crazy husband, while Tally hides evidence, and, to Lucy's rage, son Nick and Tally pair off. (Cane is horrified, too--not only because he's lost Tally but because he suspects that Tally and Nick are half-siblings.) There'll be blackmail, a birth, marriage, and divorce, and then Tally will make it big in Cane's communication business. It ends with a big predictable bang after Aunt Monday, an ancient obeah woman, comes out of the woods to spill out snazzy secrets. Old stuff with hectic stereo-southern ambiance. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal

Though McFather has nine paperback romances to her credit (OCLC shows five), this is her first hardcover novel. Set off the coast of Georgia from 1951 to 1964, it has all the elements of a romance: exotic time or place, beautiful women, handsome men, plot twists, handicaps to true love, sex (but not too much), villains, wealth, and just the hint of reality. The time period accounts for the poor treatment of blacks, but the book abounds in other stereotypes: blacks, whites, males, females, southerners, the poor . . . . What sets this book apart from hundreds of others, readily available in paperback? Not much. Though escapist fiction has devoted readers, there is not much to recommend this particular novel.
- Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312950233
• ISBN 13: 9780312950231
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 386