The Spirit of Sweetgrass

I couldn't put it down. This is so beautifully written. I have never smiled and cried so much while reading a book. I hightly recommend this especially to anyone over 65 yrs. old.

I just fell in love with Essie Mae. She was very real. At first I was put off when I read there was "dialect", which usually distracts from my reading enjoyment, but Seitz's written Gullah is beautifully done and sprinkled throughout in small, jewel-like doses. Can't wait for the next book!

The Spirit of Sweetgrass by Nicole Seitz was so enjoyable that I found it difficult to stop reading. I have reommended this book to all my friends who share my love of the Charleston area and its rich history. I absolutely hated for this story to end and cannot wait until the new novel is released. Thank you Nicole for such a heart-warming and witty book.

In her engaging debut novel, THE SPIRIT OF SWEETGRASS, Nicole Seitz introduces readers to the rich and diverse world of South Carolina's Lowcountry Gullah culture, interspersing themes of faith, forgiveness and the importance of family throughout. Using first-person narrative, Seitz introduces readers to 78-year-old Essie Mae Jenkins, a widow who sells her hand-woven sweetgrass baskets at a highway roadstand. Essie misses "Daddy Jim," her husband who died in three short months from lung cancer: "When Daddy Jim died, my whole life just flip-flopped like a catfish dying on the dock. Right about then's when I took up basket making again." But with her husband gone and income sporadic at best, Essie is in trouble. She owes $10,000 in taxes on her home, and selling baskets won't even begin to cover it. The known world and the supernatural mingle throughout the novel. In the first half, this mostly consists of Essie talking to Daddy Jim as if he is alive. "Jim, what I'm gonna do? Things is fallin' in all over me." Essie's daughter, the unlikable Henrietta, believes that the answer is for Essie to move into a retirement center. But Essie clings to her home, and to a way of life in the Gullah culture that seems on the verge of vanishing. She has other disappointments as well. Essie's beloved grandson, EJ, seems intent on marrying a white girl. And Essie's matchmaking talents are seemingly wasted on the good-looking Jeffrey, who doesn't appear interested in women. Most challenging is her relationship with the bitter Henrietta, whose angry spirit widens the deep divide between her and her mother. Not all writers can handle regional dialect well, but Seitz does an exceptional job here. Although the dialect is heavy, it reads smoothly and enhances rather than detracts from the narrative. Those readers who enjoy a supernatural, suspend-disbelief component to their fiction will enjoy the second half of the novel, in which Essie dreams that she has died and gone to heaven. There, she meets her ancestors and reunites with those loved ones who have passed on. Seitz paints this heavenly reunion with delightful imagination: "In the Lowcountry, when we would have family reunions, we'd pull everybody together and have a big ol' oyster roast with lots of drawn butter and fried shrimp caught fresh that day. Folks I ain't never seen before from all over would come out the woodwork.... Well, now take that and multiply it by a hundred. That's how crazy it is here in heaven." Heaven, she finds, is "like everythin' I ever `magined and then some." Essie's "mama" makes her okra soup and cornbread, and Essie and her husband, Daddy Jim, even engage in a little lovemaking. (Is there sex in heaven? Seitz says yes!) And in the afterlife, Daddy Jim says "...ain't no such thing as black and white folks. If somebody's done made it up to heaven, they get to glowin' like a rainbow full of all sorts of colors." Heaven holds more surprises, as when (in a subtle and poignant

Nicole Seitz lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a setting familiar to many of us who've enjoyed books by southern writers such as Pat Conroy, Dorothea Benton Frank, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Rivers Siddons. Nicole's love of Lowcountry culture and heritage comes through in this fun, endearing and inspiring tale of a spirited Gullah woman and her journey of faith, forgiveness, and the fight to save her endangered way of life. When I first read this book, I was completely taken in by the main character, Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins, a feisty 78-year-old with plenty to say and an adorable way of saying it. Here's the opening line: "This is what I remember about that night--my last night alive." As soon as I read that, I was hooked. The story that follows doesn't disappoint, and keeps the surprises coming to the very end. One of the things I loved about this novel is that it's contemporary, taking place in modern day South Carolina, yet almost feels historical because it takes me deep inside an American subculture I knew nothing about--the Gullah sweetgrass basket weavers of the Lowcountry. Ever since I read the novel, I've been itching to go down to Mount Pleasant and see the Sweetgrass ladies for myself. Nicole is not only a novelist (with a second novel on the way from Thomas Nelson), she's a wife, a mother of two, a web designer and an artist. In fact, the painting on the cover of her book is one of her own. This is one talented lady. If you'd like a book with charming scenes and characters, an unusual setting and culture, an authentic southern voice, and lots of fun, I think you'll enjoy The Spirit of Sweetgrass.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The characters were so real and likeable. The storyline had great twists that made me want to keep reading. I'm going to recommend this book to all my friends...but I'm not going to loan out my copy...I'll want to read this one again and again.