The Inheritance of Beauty

December 13, 2010
Harmony House assisted-care residents George and Maggie Jacobs have known each other for almost 80 years and lived, most of that time, in peace, despite Maggie's recent stroke. But when an oddly familiar new resident moves in, they're forced to confront the haunting events of their distant past. As children in 1920s Levy, S.C., their idyllic youth was interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious magician and his laconic son. They soon realize that he's there for a reason, and the dark secret he carries will leave one person dead, a house burned down, and all of their lives forever altered. Though George has lived with his long buried past, he decides, at 80, that it's time to return to South Carolina and face the truth. Christian author Seitz (Saving Cicadas) easily inhabits her elderly characters and deftly juggles a large cast, but she's no stranger to sentiment or hyperbole, and the former tragedies haunting her characters don't carry the life-altering drama with which they're alluded to ("Eventually, it destroyed everything I held most dear"), resulting in a novel that is equally saccharine and anticlimactic.