The Land of Mango Sunsets

The Land of Mango Sunsets Dorothea Benton Frank Grade: A- Sensuality: Kisses

I've written before about my love for Southern Fiction, in particular, books set in and around the Low Country. Two of Mary Alice Monroe's books sit on my keeper shelf (Sweetgrass and The Beach House) and I've long been a fan of Anne Rivers Siddons. I've always considered Dorothea Benton Frank somehow on a lesser rung of the Southern Fiction/Women's Fiction ladder than either Monroe or Siddons, but no more. She first came to my attention with Sullivan's Island (B+) and Plantation (B), but Isle of Palms (C+) disappointed me. Shem Creek (B-), which I read more recently, was better, but when I picked up The Land of Mango Sunsets at the bookstore, my expectations weren't all that high. I thought I'd like it, but didn't expect to be blown away. I was. I read the book on a plane between Philadelphia and Houston late last week, and cried buckets through the last eighty pages...not something I enjoyed doing in front of a large group of complete strangers, but then, that cemented its DIK status.

For me the draw of Southern Fiction is two-fold: the setting itself and the "characters," those eccentric people who exist in that time-worn setting. The book's title and cover leaped out at me at the bookstore; both were so evocative, and the book more than lived up to their beauty. The lead character begins the book as a very flawed woman; she's small-minded, concerned with the superficial at the expense of the real, and through much of the story she allows herself to be victimized by others. Miriam Elizabeth Swanson is a middle aged woman whose husband left her for a lingerie model. Because she tried to force her two grown sons into intervening with their father to save her marriage, she's now estranged from them. Her relationship with her oldest son is further strained because she disapproves of his girlfriend, a Jamaican woman who not only has the temerity to be black, she's seems quite dour to Miriam. And she made the mistake of criticizing the names her youngest son and his wife gave their two children - Independence Maybank Swanson and Mary Freedman Swanson, aka MF. For a racist, she has a wicked sense of humor.

Miriam lives with a bird named Harry, a most marvelous mimic (she taught him to say of her ex-husband, "Charles is a horse's ass"), and rents out the third floor of her residence to Kevin, a fabulous gay man who decorates windows at a high end store like Bendel's. After her other tenant dies, she rents out the second floor to another Southern transplant, Liz. Their relationship sours as soon as Miriam discovers that Liz is sleeping with a married man.

Although Miriam's been divorced for more than a couple of years, she clings to her old life of charity work even though she's now relegated to committee jobs nobody else wants. She tries to suck up to a major society matron, but when the woman humiliates her publicly, she stands up for herself. Unfortunately, the manner in which she finally grows a backbone has major repercussions, and it's Liz who pays the price, physically.

Miriam grew up on Sullivan's Island, and it's not too far into the story when she goes home for a visit with her mother, who still lives in their old house. Her mother was always unique, but now Miss Josie looks like a hippie, she's growing her own vegetables and milking goats, and smoking pot with Harrison, a man near Miriam's age whom she believes is her mom's new beau.

During that first visit, Miss Josie tries to impress upon her daughter that she's holding onto all the wrong things from her past. When Miriam tries to explain that she's doing what she thought her mother always wanted for her, it creates friction among the two. But after Liz is released from the hospital, Miriam takes her to Sullivan's Island to recuperate.

There's so much more to this book, and while much of the magic occurs on Sullivan's Island, New York turns out to be a pretty magical place as well. After Liz is attacked, Miriam's son, the doctor, steps in to help, and it's not long thereafter that she decides to end the estrangement with both her sons, and that means accepting a black woman into her heart. It's a bit facile, but in the context of the story, it works.

It won't take the reader long to determine why Miss Josie is smoking pot, and what her relationship with Harrison really is, but it didn't really bother me that Miriam had some catching up to do. While she's working it all out, she becomes involved with a friend of Harrisons and allows herself to cut loose. It's silly, she knows it's silly, but it's so freeing for her that she revels in it anyway.

Once Miriam reconciles with her son and his girlfriend, whose own mother died years earlier, she tackles their wedding wholeheartedly. Letting go of old biases changes her life; by opening her heart her family becomes whole again, and that she's able to show up her ex-husband and his bitchy second wife is simply icing on the cake.

By the time the wedding occurs, the flowers, the food, the shining silver, and the joyful dancing all become a living metaphor for the warmth that is family. And one constant in family is this: New members are added while others die off.

To give any more detail would destroy the book's sensibility. It would also diminish Miriam's telling of the story in her own way. Southerners don't tell stories in thumbnail sketches, and Miriam takes her time painting a lush picture. She tells her story leisurely; it meanders, but the journey here is as important as the destination.

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

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