Book Nook: Carolina Gold

After reading Catching Katie, I was eager to finish up my assignment on Inspirational/Christian fiction. I received an ARC (advanced readers' copy) of Carolina Gold by Dorothy Love and, on the suggestion of another librarian who loved it, took the ARC home with me. I have a very good friend from the Lowcountry in SC who, surprisingly, actually came back from Christmas break with bags of Carolina Gold as presents for people. I was taken with the idea of a female planter in Reconstruction era South Carolina, and the sort of Jane Eyre-esque references to becoming a teacher employed by a man with a mysterious past.

However, there is much about this book that I think is misleading from the description given on the back of the book. While the story purports to be about a woman trying to reclaim her family home and plant rice, it is a very flat plot point in the book. Plant rice, get rained out, crop destroyed, plant more rice, get ruined, etc. The meat of the story is in Charlotte's relationship with Mr. Betancourt and his two unruly daughters. Charlotte is such a warm character, who is so very empathetic that her growth and epiphanies have to do with the children she sees around her and less to do with the rice. The other thing that bothered me was that some of the characters don't stay consistent. Ms. Love does design characters that are supposed to be inconsistent, but they mostly remain out of site until the end with an interaction that I felt had no real place in the book. In particular I was thinking about a freeman Charlotte encounters named Trim. He had been owned by her father before the Civil War and she finds him, on her return, uncomfortable asking for his salary, but refusing to work otherwise. Later in the story Trim is fetching Charlotte from the docks every other week with no word about being paid. It seemed like it was added to the story as a method to describe the situation in Reconstruction, but once her motives had been established she fell back into flatter secondary characterizations. Other than that, poor typeface choices for Charlotte's "letter voice" were hopefully fixed in the final print run and shouldn't cloud my review of this book.

I was worried that I would find the books I had chosen to read for Christian Fiction were going to be too preachy, but I think Carolina Gold is much less Christian Fic than literally Inspirational. Religion does play a roll in the creation of certain characters, but Reverends, Nuns and Priests would have been a common site in South Carolina and New Orleans. There are a few time when Charlotte turns inward and confronts her religion but her motivations are much less directed by God and more her own moral compass. Her strength and patience have been instilled in her by her father, the hardships they suffered, and need to move forward.

I am definitely going to recommend this book to my friend's mother who still lives in SC's Lowcountry, but I think that parts of this book fell short of meeting the goals that the author set out with. If the book was longer, or the romance between Charlotte and Mr. Betancourt was more pronounced, I think I would be more interested, but Ms. Love's ability to describe her surroundings, particularly Charlotte's summer cottage and the filth and sickness of the New Orleans infirmaries is very strong. Not my favorite thing to recommend, but something I can save for reader's who appreciate setting or maybe hail from South Carolina.

*This blog is part of a grant Medfield has been awarded through the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Library and Services Technology Act administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.