Queen Sugar
Who doesn’t love a great Southern read ? Our Southern culture offers stories of tall tales to romantic spins and mysteries unsolved. If you’re from the South, the fictional characters of any southern book seem familiar . You either have an uncle, cousin or close family member that resembles the story being told. Stories of southern families resonates with you because you have lived the story. How many times have you heard your Mother say, I could write a book. Yep, in the South , we do love our manners and airing dirty laundry is not allowed. It’s just not Southern.
Recently I read that Oprah’s Harpo Productions had purchased the screen rights to the book “Queen Sugar.” Filming has already begun and it will be airing on OWN as a series. I am looking forward to seeing how they will bring this book alive.
Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile took eleven years to write. This storyline developed over time as she visited the South. Her depiction of Louisiana’s Sugar Mills takes you back into where we were and how the South grew.
The story begins when a daughter inherits a sugarcane farm in Louisiana of 800 areas.
Charley and her daughter arrive from California in time for the summer growing season but nothing could have prepared her for what she was getting into. Her judgmental but big-hearted grandmother tells her, cane farming is always going to be a white man’s business and she, as a black woman from the South, will not be able to compete. The summer begins and Charley must balance the challenges of her farm and the family dynamics of a homesick daughter and her troubled brother and showing the Southern farmers she can compete and make a profit in the sugarcane business.
It is a great story of the South and its culture. You can download it from Amazon on Kindle.
Watch for the upcoming opening of the series on OWN.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, I can’t help but think of my favorite romantic author. He writes love stories from the heart. He makes it all believable and you fall in love all over again with love. Nicholas Sparks ! He is not a native of North Carolina but he reminds me of a saying my husband told me when we met. ” I may not have been born in North Carolina, but I got here as soon as I could”. Nicholas Sparks resides in New Bern NC. This little town,in fact, is where my husband and I spent part of our honeymoon. A beautiful, quaint, easy living city on the Neuse and Trent Rivers .
It is the birthplace to Pepsi. And Pepsi has its own museum you can visit. My husband and I visit New Bern when we are passing through traveling to Atlantic Beach, NC. And in our last visit, my husband took me on the tour by Nicholas Sparks’ home. I know, of course, we didn’t see Nicholas, but the ride on the river was worth it all, plus seeing his home was a treat. When Nicholas Sparks’ book , The Notebook was made into film, my girlfriends and I had to see it. We were then forever fans of anything Nicholas wrote . And he has continued to write many love stories . When his book, Nights in Rodanthe was being filmed at the Outer Banks, I had friends who auditioned to be extras and were able to say, ” I was in a movie with Richard Gere.” You can still see the cottage , Serendipity, but it has been purchased and moved to a safer location. After Hurricane Bill, it nearly crumbled into the ocean. In the movie it was called The Inn At Rodanthe.
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