Scheming Southern flare lights up The Empress of Cooke County, the first novel by Elizabeth Bass Parman. Set in 1966, in the small, folksy town of Spark, located in Cooke County, Tenn., this dual point-of-view narrative centers on a fraught mother-daughter relationship.
Posey Jarvis is an outspoken, 38-year-old wife and mother who idolizes Jacqueline Kennedy. She and her sweet, good-natured husband of almost 20 years, Vern, appear settled in Spark. However, Posey still carries a secret torch for a man who jilted her years before; swigs of gin from a tucked-away flask help her cope. Posey's broken heart still colors her life and, especially, her high hopes for her 18-year-old daughter, Callie Jane. When Callie Jane is shocked by an unexpected marriage proposal and feels pressured into saying yes by her fiancé's family, she must confront the expectations that have shaped her life. The stakes are raised when Posey inherits a once glamorous but now dilapidated house from a long-lost relative; she decides to spruce up the house for Callie Jane's upcoming wedding and her own 20th high school reunion. A lifetime of angst, secrets, and rebellion escalates between overbearing, conniving Posey and Callie Jane, who fights to finally come into her own.
Mounting drama sharpens brisk plotting, which includes story threads about a Peeping Tom and the changing mores of the social-climbing South. Fans of unfaltering Southern belles written by authors such as Fannie Flagg and Kathryn Stockett will bask in the sassy charm of Parman's stellar debut. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines