Book 34 (2011): The Peach Keepers

The Peach Keeper is part Southern magic, part mystery, part love story...

Willa Jackson came home to Walls of Water, North Carolina. She was a wild teenager but a quiet and sedate adult, single, living quietly, visiting her grandmother, and missing her dead father. She runs a sporting good store and has a coffe bar in the corner run by quirky Rachel, who sells yummy baked goods.

Then re- construction of the Blue ridge Madam, a mansion that was once in Willa's family but was sold in the middle of a 1930's scandal, is almost done, bringing ghosts that Willa knew and didn't back home. A boy who's now a man that was once a crush, a girl who's now a perfect woman who wasn't a friend in high school but is in and out of Willa's adult life but not by either woman's choice, and other ghosts she didn't know about.

Willa finds friends and secrets in strange places, and also finds a new part of herself.

This was a good read, and I always like a bit of the Southern magic- not fairies or monsters, but the illusion of Southern women's traditions and beliefs, of their sayings, some of the magic that comes from a bright moon, a scent of peaches in the air, or of a soft breeze on a still day... I love this story! (pages 272)

B