Low Country

February 15, 2021
Ghosts and legends swirl in an affecting family memoir. Making a captivating debut, Jones recounts growing up in coastal South Carolina amid alligators, water moccasins, and Venus' flytraps, seedy bars and souvenir shops; where raging hurricanes pummeled the shore and strong-willed ghosts haunted the land. While her relatives became wealthy from the tourist trade in Myrtle Beach, her own family eked out a living, "beaten down by one bad break after another, surviving as always due to the generosity of family until it was too much effort to imagine escaping." The disparities between rich and hardscrabble were as blatant to her as those between men and women. "I come from a line of women," she writes, "for whom being walked all over and jumped on for the fun of cruelty was progress." Nowhere was this cruelty more evident than in her paternal grandparents' marriage. "Granddaddy's violence needed no provocation," writes Jones about the physical beatings that plagued his wife, sons, and grandsons. "I came to understand," she writes, "from the first time I saw him raise a hand to Nana, that his inner well of fury ran too deep to be contained in just one body, and that the terrifying anger behind his violence was the spring of his other most defining quality, his racism." If her grandfather represented fearsome patriarchy, Jones, even as a young girl, felt oppressed by sexism. Dolled up with her hair curled, she was pushed in a circuit of pageants "that fostered all the little girls of future means." Education, she realized early, would be her escape: "though I wasn't sure where that was, I knew that it had to be different and far away" from Myrtle Beach. The author also lovingly portrays her feckless, hard-drinking father, who aspired to country-music stardom; her mother, often anguished and overwhelmed; and her beloved Nana. Her confidential asides to readers create a genuine sense of intimacy. Lyrical prose graces a deftly crafted narrative.

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April 1, 2021

In a haunting, lyrical narrative, journalist Jones depicts the history of her family, set against the backdrop of South Carolina. Interspersing stories of the ghosts who haunt the South Carolina Low Country and skeletons from her family's past, Jones crafts a gothic setting for a literary memoir, while maintaining an invitingly informal narrative voice. With a series of vivid snapshots, she charts the rise of her family's wealth as they acquired beachfront properties, as well as the hidden tolls of domestic violence and drug abuse. The author's writing shines when recounting memories of spending days and nights at her grandmother's house, as well as stories of Jones's father who tries to break (although he does not always succeed) the cycle of violence that he experienced from his own father. Threaded throughout are stories of the infamous pirates and long-suffering women who gave the Low Country its ghost story-rich history. VERDICT Jones's gift for spinning a tale is readily apparent, and her intertwining the history of the Low Country with her own familial history gives the book depth. A haunting memoir with poetic prose that will appeal to a large audience, owing to its interesting subject and skillful writing.--Stacy Shaw, Denver

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 26, 2021
Jones debuts with an intoxicating if puzzling story of her dysfunctional South Carolina family, who ran a mini-empire of hotels and seafood restaurants in Myrtle Beach, S.C. “The South does not own tragedy, but it sure seems to have taken a liking to the region,” she writes. To illustrate, Jones strings together half-true
tales of her unconventional upbringing, bankrolled “by tourists who anointed themselves with suntan oil.” She recalls how her father “left us to move to Nashville more than a few times,” in search of country-music stardom, but his and her mother’s dreams were quashed by her “Granddaddy,” a violent, tight-fisted patriarch whose employees were “as afraid of him as we were.” A notorious bootlegger, he opened a number of motels, pancake houses, and bars, where her dad and uncles worked as bartenders and waiters, and tended to arcade games. Her nana endured a lifetime of abuse at the hands of Granddaddy, until a fall left him with his “scalp cut wide open.” From here, Jones gambles on a speculative climax to her family’s story that fails to deliver. While her sentences are finely wrought, they can’t mask a weak narrative spine. This tale of a tourist-trap childhood would make a great beach read, if it weren’t for the unfocused delivery. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.