Cold Sassy Tree is the undeniably entertaining and extraordinarily moving account of small-town Southern life in a bygone era. Brimming with characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Olive Ann Burns’s charming tale is a classic.
One thing you could depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, was that word got around—fast. If the preacher’s wife’s petticoat showed, the ladies would make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things took a scandalous turn. That was the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, eloped with Miss Love Simpson—a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee.
On that day, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy’s adventures began, and an unimpeachably pious town came to life.
As the newlyweds’ chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his renegade grandfather’s second adolescence. Meanwhile, Will does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it, and he kisses his first girl and survives that too.
Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny Southern romance.
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"This is one of my top 5 favorites of all time! A coming of age, family saga, told through the eyes of a 12 year old boy. Grandma has just passed away, and Grandpa announces "she is as dead as she is ever going to be!"....we are allowed to watch the extended family deal with all the ensuing issues in a most intimate way, through Will Tweedy's eyes, and the vision is priceless."
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Naomi (5 out of 5 stars)