QUEEN SUGAR

Narrator Miriam Hyman presents the story of Charley Bordelon, a recently widowed mother who pulls up stakes in L.A. to return to her family roots in Louisiana. Her recently deceased father has left her an eight-hundred-acre fallow sugarcane plantation that she must bring back to life if she and her daughter are have a future. Through tone and pacing, Hyman brings the characters to life--from the strong-willed Charley, who will do whatever it takes to have a successful harvest, to her equally strong-willed grandmother, who puts responsibility to family above all, and her bitter half-brother, whose attitude of victimhood almost destroys them all. The story's pace is slow, but the patient listener hears a slice of a little known culture. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2014]