A hot, sweltering
Florida summer is the setting for Heart
of Palm, a debut novel by Laura
Lee Smith. The story centers on three months in the lives of the Bravo
family of Utina, a sleepy little town near St. Augustine, where Palm Sunday palms and moonshine once
offered a prosperous economic existence. But that was years before. Times have
changed for the town and for the Bravos, whose long-held properties on the
Intracoastal Waterway are of great interest to enthusiastic land developers.
What will it take for the Bravos to sell?
The prospect dredges up repressed
emotions and looms over the family that consists of the matriarch, Arla, once a
"perfect," striking red head and her adult children - Carson, a
philandering investment manager with secrets; Frank, the dutiful son and
proprietor of "Uncle Henry's," the family's restaurant on the
waterfront; and Sofia, an emotionally wounded woman with hair as red as her
mother's used to be and a fiery temper to match. But it is Dean, the patriarch,
whose absence casts a long shadow over the family's past, as old wounds,
secrets, heartbreaks and missed opportunities have woven themselves into the
fabric of the present - and maybe even the future, too.
Well-developed
characters confronted by an undercurrent of change propel this unhurried family
saga. Smith is a careful, detailed writer who assembles big, bold, well-drawn
scenes - moments from the everyday lives of the Bravos that resonate with
deeper insights into how personal regrets and longings shape the fates of all
involved.
Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith
Grove Press, $25.00, Hardcover, 9780802121028, 496
pp
Publication Date: April 2,
2013
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Please note: This
review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness:
Reader's Edition (4/16/13), click HERE.