New York Times best-selling novelist Mary Alice Monroe will speak at a “Girls Night Out” event at Turnrow Books on Thursday.
The event will include a book signing and reception for the author’s newest novel, “A Lowcountry Wedding,” and will feature a happy hour with light snacks.
“(‘A Lowcountry Wedding’) is part of a popular series of women’s fiction, and it’s perfect summer reading or beach reading,” said Jamie Kornegay, proprietor of Turnrow Books.
Kornegay said that Monroe’s work is similar to that of authors Karen White, Carolyn Haines and Fannie Flagg.
Prior to the event Thursday evening, Monroe will speak to the members of Greenwood Garden Club during its meeting.
“We’re very excited to have her here,” said Rebecca Ritchey, president of the Greenwood Garden Club. “I’m looking forward to meeting her, and I’m eager to read her new book. It sounds very interesting and like something the members would like to read.”
Set in South Carolina’s coastal lowcountry, Monroe’s novel focuses on the approaching summer weddings of two half-sisters, Carson Muir and Harper Muir-James.
Carson, Harper and their other half-sister, Dora, live vastly different lives, but they all feel at home at Sea Breeze, a plantation on a barrier island off the South Carolina coast where their grandmother, Marietta “Mamaw” Muir, resides.
With the weddings only two months away, the sisters are thrilled to be spending more time together. However, the stress from planning their weddings catches up with them and precedes the revelation of a shocking family secret.
“A Lowcountry Wedding” is the fourth edition in Monroe’s Lowcountry Summer Series. The others include “The Summer Girls,” “The Summer Wind” and “The Summer’s End.”
“A Lowcountry Wedding” includes enough background information to where the novel can stand alone for those just now getting introduced to Monroe’s work. The Muir sisters and the lowcountry’s scenery and culture are the main tie-ins throughout the series.
“People really love the Lowcountry in South Carolina. It’s such a distinctive region of the country, kind of like the Mississippi Delta,” said Kornegay.
Monroe lives with her family on a barrier island outside Charleston, South Carolina. She said she found her true calling in environmental fiction when she moved to coastal South Carolina and became “captivated by the beauty and fragility of her new home.”
Besides the Lowcountry Summer Series, Monroe has written 14 other novels and two children’s books.
Monroe’s novel “The Beach House” is being adapted this year into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, starring three-time Golden Globe nominee Andie MacDowell.
For more information about the book or the upcoming event, visit www.turnrowbooks.com.
• Contact Ruthie Robison at 581-7233 or rrobison@gwcommonwealth.com.
