Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Peach Keeper -Sarah Addison Allen

The Peach Keeper
Sarah Addison Allen
Bantam, Mar 22 2011, $25.99
ISBN: 9780553807226

Thirty year old Willa Jackson hopes to be able to move beyond the long shadow cast by her ancestors who went from prominence to poverty. Her family’s once proud home The Blue Ridge Madam symbolizes the acme and decline of her clan as much as her being a female storekeeper.

The Walls of Water, North Carolina Women’s Society Club President Paxton Osgood, who attended highs school with Willa, invites her and others to attend the gala reopening of the restored Blue Ridge Madam as a prestigious inn. However, the remains of traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked the circuit over seven decades ago, are found. Ironically as both struggle due to a lack of any true friends, their grandmothers Agatha and Georgie were best of friends. Now with a common cause to learn what happened to Devlin, they begin to investigate the talk. With a hint of magic in the air, Willa and Paxton begin to forge a friendship that each hopes mirrors that of their ancestors.

Although there is a sense of Garden Spells in the air and a touch of the amateur sleuth, The Peach Keeper is more a character driven tale of friendship. Willa and Paxton are fully developed lonely protagonists who bond over Blue Ridge Madam renovation and corpse interred for years under the peach tree. The story line is uplifting as the magic of the latest visit to Sarah Addison Allen’s North Carolina (see The Girl Who Chased the Moon) is everyone needs close friends.

Harriet Klausner

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