Sweetwater Creek

Anna Fields crafts an unforgettable voice in 11-year-old Emily Parmenter, who inhabits a beautiful but isolated world on her father's spaniel-breeding plantation. When Lulu Foxworth, a troubled Carolina debutante who craves the plantation's isolation for mysterious reasons, arrives for a summer stay, the tempo of Emily's world falters, and unease becomes palpable. Fields's characters are all fully fleshed. In particular, the family cook, Cleta, is a joy; her gravelly world-weary mutterings are a counterpoint to the drawling bellow of Emily's father and the bittersweet shifts of Emily's own voice as it travels from youthful bewilderment, to awakening awareness, to clear-eyed understanding of an adult world. A superior read of a memorable book. A.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

August 15, 2005
Veteran novelist Siddons (Islands
; Nora, Nora
) returns to South Carolina's low country for her latest, a capable but uninspired story of a young girl's coming-of-age on the family plantation. Emily Parmenter is a lonely 12-year-old whose life revolves around the Boykin spaniels her family raises as hunting dogs. Her mother ran off; her beloved disabled brother, Buddy, who introduced her to literature, blew his head off with a shotgun (although Emily has conversations with him in her head); and her father, Walter, withholds all praise and attention. Her solace is her dog, Elvis, and Cleta, the wise black housekeeper. When 20-year-old LuLu Foxworth of the blueblood Foxworths arrives to spend time at the Parmenter plantation and work with the dogs, Emily is reluctant to welcome her, while social-climbing Walter is thrilled, hoping LuLu can teach Emily "to be a lady." The two emotionally neglected girls bond, and Lulu confides her dirty little secret: her addiction to alcohol and the smarmy Yancey Byrd, with whom Lulu has a 9½ Weeks
–style love affair. The plot follows formula and the ends tie up happily for everyone but poor LuLu, the bad rich girl with the heart of gold.