ISLANDS

ISLANDS is a Southern saga about lifelong friends who call themselves the Scrubs. The core members grew up together in Charleston; with their spouses they share a shambling Carolina beach house where they spend vacations and holidays together and share high points and low. Anne Siddons is like a juggler keeping eight wheeling torches effortlessly in air while telling a story and whistling Dixie. This seems to be a tale of lucky, loving friends and the changes time brings, until things take a Gothic turn. Not the kind of reader who would let you mistake a Kentucky accent for a Carolina one, Kate Fleming is warm, engaged, and thoroughly convincing, and does this entertainment to a buttery turn. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 04]