About the Author

Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina. She was the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels, including Sullivan's Island, Plantation, Pawleys Island, Shem Creek, and Isle of Palms.

Reviews

Praise for Sullivan's Island

“The setting and the characters are blazingly authentic…Frank evokes the eccentric Hamilton family and their feisty Gullah housekeeper with originality and conviction; Susan herself—smart, sarcastic, funny and endearingly flawed—makes a lively and memorable narrator. Thanks to these scrappily compelling portraits, this is a rich read.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Sullivan’s Island is hilarious and wise, an up-to-the-minute report on what it is like to be alive and female in the South Carolina Lowcountry today.”—Pat Conroy
 
“Dottie Frank’s take on the South Carolina Lowcountry is tough, tender, achingly real, and very, very funny. Sullivan’s Island roars with life.”—Anne Rivers Siddons
 
“In Sullivan’s Island, southern womanhood has found a new voice, and it is outrageous, hilarious, relentless and impossible to ignore.”—John Berendt
 
“A satisfying treat.”—Orlando Sentinel
 
“Frank’s wit, her fast pacing and the details of Lowcountry life and place give the novel a solid grounding…The book’s greatest pleasure lies in the delightfully realized Susan, who has all the pluck, charm and gutsy good humor anyone might wish for.”—The State

“One heck of a beach book…Frank keeps you reading compulsively.”—The Charlotte Observer
 
“Filled with lowcountry and Gullah legend, this delightful contemporary romance is a very moving story of family, love and place.”—Knoxville News-Sentinel

Frank's debut novel is a story of redemption set in South Carolina's steamy low country. Susan Hamilton Hayes's comfortable Charleston existence is shattered when she finds her husband in bed with another woman. Faced with a failed marriage, a confused teenage daughter and a mediocre job, she sets about the business of healing. Slowly, supported by visits to her sister in their childhood home on sleepy Sullivan's Island, Susan becomes a successful newspaper columnist, regains her confidence as a woman (despite a hilariously deflating date) and finally explores the death of her complex, abusive father decades before. Chapters alternate between the present and 1963, the year her father died, as Susan faces both the strength and the damaging effects of her family legacy. The ending - complete with a perfect suitor reemerging from Susan's youth - is almost too picture perfect to ring true but both the setting and the characters are blazingly authentic. Frank evokes the eccentric Hamilton family and their feisty Gullah housekeeper with originality and conviction; Susan herself - smart, sarcastic, funny and endearingly flawed - makes a lively and memorable narrator. Thanks to these scrappily compelling portraits, this is a rich read. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Praise for Sullivan's Island

"The setting and the characters are blazingly authentic...Frank evokes the eccentric Hamilton family and their feisty Gullah housekeeper with originality and conviction; Susan herself-smart, sarcastic, funny and endearingly flawed-makes a lively and memorable narrator. Thanks to these scrappily compelling portraits, this is a rich read."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Sullivan's Island is hilarious and wise, an up-to-the-minute report on what it is like to be alive and female in the South Carolina Lowcountry today."-Pat Conroy

"Dottie Frank's take on the South Carolina Lowcountry is tough, tender, achingly real, and very, very funny. Sullivan's Island roars with life."-Anne Rivers Siddons

"In Sullivan's Island, southern womanhood has found a new voice, and it is outrageous, hilarious, relentless and impossible to ignore."-John Berendt

"A satisfying treat."-Orlando Sentinel

"Frank's wit, her fast pacing and the details of Lowcountry life and place give the novel a solid grounding...The book's greatest pleasure lies in the delightfully realized Susan, who has all the pluck, charm and gutsy good humor anyone might wish for."-The State

"One heck of a beach book...Frank keeps you reading compulsively."-The Charlotte Observer

"Filled with lowcountry and Gullah legend, this delightful contemporary romance is a very moving story of family, love and place."-Knoxville News-Sentinel