The Land of Mango Sunsets Book

Dorothea Benton Frank is one of America's most insightful writers weaving highly addictive tales of the conundrums of life with hilarity and heat. Now, in The Land of Mango Sunsets, Frank gives us one woman's journey toward a hard-won truth—that life isn't always what it appears to be, and the sooner you realize that pride won't keep you warm at night, the happier you will be.

Meet Miriam Elizabeth Swanson, in a full-blown snit, buoyed by a fabulous cast who run the gamut from insufferable to wonderful. Miriam spins out from the revolving door of her postured life as a Manhattan quasi socialite while she thirsts, no, starves for recognition. How did she become what she hates the most and what does she endure to realize it? And where are the answers? It takes a few spins, dips and one spectacular fall until Miriam gets her head on straight. Then in a whoosh she's off to the enchanted and mysterious land of Sullivans Island, deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

Told straight from the heart in her vivid, highly entertaining style, The Land of Mango Sunsets just might be Frank's finest work to date. If you plan to listen to this book, don't make plans to do anything else for a while.

Publishers Weekly

A middle-aged woman's self-discovery is predictable but not pedestrian in Frank's (Full of Grace; Pawleys Island) latest. A divorce has stalled Miriam Swanson's life: her snooty Hermès-swathed Manhattan friends abandoned her after her ex-husband "ran off with his whore"; one of her grown sons keeps her at arm's length, while her other son, a "nice nerd," stays beneath the family radar for months at a time; and the major drawback to her job at a museum is her boss icy former friend Agnes Willis. In a twist that stretches disbelief, Miriam catches Agnes's husband, Truman, having a noisy rendezvous with Liz, the cute new tenant in Miriam's townhouse. After a brief interlude that sends Miriam to a South Carolina barrier island to visit her former cotillion queen mother and meet the dreamy local Harrison Ford ("Not that wimpy actor") Miriam reveals Truman's affair, with consequences that fuel the remainder of the book. Frank's narrative is heavy on healing physically, mentally and the importance of family, and though her sometimes delightfully nasty heroine is sympathetic, supporting cast members have one note apiece. This isn't Frank's finest, but it'll sate her fans. (Apr.)