Silk Hope, NC

The old house in Silk Hope was meant never to be sold but to be inherited by the daughters of the line. When their mother dies, it is left to Frannie and Natalie to decide what the house means for them as vigorous, independent modern women - especially for irresponsible, irreverent, freewheeling Frannie, whose wild escapades hide a deep sadness. Attracted to bad men and tall tales, Frannie has always seen herself as an escape artist in a treacherous world - a world where women, once punished for being too free, are now expected always to say "yes," that "brave and kind word...supposed to make up for all the wrong in the history of mankind.". With eloquence and compassion and humor, Lawrence Naumoff tells the story of the resilient bond between these sisters and of Frannie's search for her father, her love for a stoic, one-armed man, her trouble with heartless and humorless authorities - and, finally, her awakening to the desire to lead a good life, removed from a culture that seems to have replaced honor and dignity and virtue with greed and power and desperation. Silk Hope, NC is a buoyant and moving parable in which two good women find, among the hidden, forgotten virtues of the past, a sustenance to carry them into the future.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.