Moon Over Edisto by Beth Webb Hart

Despite the fact that I sometimes get irritated when authors take liberties with my beloved lowcountry, I like reading books set in and around Charleston. When this AR copy of Moon Over Edisto fell into my hands, I was prepared to be disgruntled by inaccuracies, and by the problems that often plague AR books: typos, weird printing sequences, etc. However, I was pleasantly surprised on both counts.

The story, told from 5 varying points of view, centers on old family hurts and betrayals which surface as trouble and tragedy again haunts a family. Julia, an artist in New York City, comes home for a brief visit to Charleston, and to the old family home on Edisto, when her widowed stepmother falls ill. Julia's half siblings, young children from this second marriage, need caring for while their mother recuperates from surgery to combat lung cancer. The kicker is that the stepmother is Julia's age, and was her best friend in college. Julia and her own sister, both hurt and bitter after the break-up of their parents, have had nothing to do with her father's new family, seeing them only once at their father's funeral.

The story grows from there, with the careful examination of feelings and circumstance by Julia, her sister, her young half-sister, Julia's mother, and an old friend still in the area. The star of the tale remains the beautiful South Carolina lowcountry, with its beautiful wetlands, and the bounty of the sea and land. It was a nice book to read as summer moves to fall, here on the Carolina coast.  This is the first novel I have read by Beth Webb HArt, and I will look for more.