BOOKS

'High Tide Club' is beach reading at its best

Author Mary Kay Andrews celebrates family and female bonding

Ben Steelman StarNews Staff
"The High Tide Club" is the 15th novel by Mary Kay Andrews.

In his 1975 song "You Never Even Called Me By My Name," David Allan Coe tried to pack in every single country-Western meme, from Mama to pickup trucks to drinkin' and prison. (The last verse, credited to Steve Goodman, started off, "Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison ...")

Mary Kay Andrews' latest novel, "The High Tide Club," pulls almost the same trick for the Summer Beach Read.

It's all here, folks: Small, quaint Southern beach town. Gorgeous, unspoiled barrier island. Undying female friendships. No-account men. Wise, old black ladies. A magnificent decaying Southern mansion. Two homicides. Two mystery paternity cases. Plus, a legal conundrum straight out of John Grisham.

Things start up in 1941 when we see three teenage women and their younger black friend burying a body — a man's body — in an oyster mound, just before sunrise.

The threesome, we shortly learn, are the membership of the High Tide Club — old school friends who make a custom of skinny-dipping by the light of the full moon, preferably on Mermaid Beach. (Can someone say "Ya-Ya!)

Cut to the present. Brooke Trappnell, a struggling lawyer and a single mom with a 3-year-old, is abruptly summoned out to Shellhaven, the legendary estate out on the (fictional) Georgia Sea Island of Talisa.

There, she encounters the imperious Josephine Bettendorf Warrick, lady of the estate. Josephine is 99 years old and dying, finally, of lung cancer. She has no family other than her two Chihuahuas. Her assignment for Brooke: Find her three closest friends, the members of the High Tide Club, and summon them or their heirs to Shellhaven so Josephine can make amends before she dies.

(Amends for what? That's one of the mysteries.)

Brooke is also to block state efforts to seize Shellhaven by eminent domain for a state park. Josephine wants it saved as a nature preserve — and as a trust for her friends.

Things soon grow complicated. For one thing, Brooke discovers that one of the club members was her own grandmother. Also, a number of conflicting Bettendorf heirs keep showing up.

Also, there's the matter of Shellhaven's enduring scandal, the puzzling disappearance of Russell Strickland, a wealthy heir (and, by some accounts, a mean drunk), who disappeared on Talisa Island the morning of his engagement party back in 1941 and was never seen again. (And guess what? His fiancee was one of the High Tide girls.)

As if that weren't enough, in the midst of things, the father of Brooke's son shows up. Pete, a dashing, handsome wildlife biologist, has been off in the wilds of Alaska for the past four years, Brooke got pregnant after a single night of passion and has never told Pete that little Henry is his. She's never told him about Henry at all.

Further complicating things, Brooke thinks she might be falling for Gabe, her old mentor from the law firm where she once worked.

"The High Tide" club will not be mistaken for a work by Henry James, although the plot — heavy on romantic twists, terrible secrets and bald coincidences — would make a pretty good Italian opera.

What it really makes is a beach book, with brisk plot, a dash of humor and plenty of female bonding.

Andrews ("Savannah Blue," "Little Bitty Lies," "The Weekenders") is based in Atlanta but spent a number of years in Raleigh. She is a member of the Weymouth Seven, a circle of Tar Heel writers including Diane Chamberlain, Margaret Maron and Sarah Shaber. Under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, she's the author of mysteries including "Every Crooked Nanny" and "To Live and Die in Dixie."

Reporter Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-343-2208 or Ben.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com.

"THE HIGH TIDE CLUB"

By Mary Kay Andrews

St. Martin's, $27.99