Synopses & Reviews
Olive Ann Burns's enormously popular bestseller has warmed the hearts of readers since its original publication by Houghton Mifflin in 1984. Now Houghton celebrates its return to our house with a gorgeous new paperback edition. Set in the fictional town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Burns's novel centers on the charming fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee decides to marry the young Miss Love Simpson a mere three weeks after his wife — Will's grandmother — has died, he inspires a whirlwind of local gossip. Young Will suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal, which he gracefully humors and endures; meanwhile, he has his own growing to do and mischief to find.
Brimming with hilarious episodes, delightful observations, and colorful characters who are both unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy Tree is a book to be reread and treasured.
Review
"One of the best portraits of small-town Southern life ever written." Pat Conroy
Review
"One beautiful book. Better than To Kill A Mockingbird." Shirley Abbott
Synopsis
The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around--fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson--a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward--the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style.
Synopsis
On July 5, 1906, scandal breaks in the small town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, when the proprietor of the general store, E. Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson. He is barely three weeks a widower, and she is only half his age and a Yankee to boot. As their marriage inspires a whirlwind of local gossip, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal, and that's where his adventures begin.
Cold Sassy Tree is the undeniably entertaining and extraordinarily moving account of small-town Southern life in a bygone era. Brimming with characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Olive Ann Burnss classic bestseller is a timeless, funny, and resplendent treasure.
About the Author
Olive Ann Burns was born in 1924 on a farm in Banks County, Georgia, and went to school in nearby Commerce, which was the model for Cold Sassy. She attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and for ten years was on the Sunday magazine staff of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. She is married to the magazine's editor, Andrew Sparks, and they have two children. This novel has its roots in stories told by the author's parents and other relatives. Nine years ago, while recovering from cancer, Olive Ann Burns decided to try her hand at fiction, "for something more exciting to think about than fever and chemotherapy." The result is Cold Sassy Tree.