Shem Creek

What is there about the low country of South Carolina that attracts good novelists? First Pat Conroy, now I have discovered Dorothea Benton Frank. I just finished her fine novel Shem Creek. You might be amazed to learn that the villain is an environmental whacko high school teacher! It is a love story. Lots of people are loved, the way it should be in our world.

A mom, after her husband proves to be an unfaithful jerk, takes her two teenage daughters and, seeking healing, moves back to the low country from New Jersey. She had been raised in the low country, and her sister still lives there. And what a wonderful loving sister she proves to be to our main character, the mom.

The mom and her new employer eventually become lovers and marry, after each one gets betrayed by their unfaithful first spouses. Both slowly realized that they had found the character in each other that was missing in their first spouses.

The book has a very happy ending for all of the characters the reader comes to care about.