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Loading... Cold Sassy Tree (1984)by Olive Ann Burns
  
Southern Fiction (28) » 23 more Family Drama (7) Carole's List (56) Historical Fiction (301) Five star books (303) Best family sagas (108) Small Town Fiction (21) Books Read in 2007 (26) Great Audiobooks (40) Towns and Villages (30) Older People (24) Protagonists - Boys (79) First Novels (106) Family Stories (96) No current Talk conversations about this book. 1   fingerpost | Sep 18, 2020 |  Read this years ago, but just re-read while listening to the audio. The story was so enriched because of the Southern accent. (  )1 Meladylo | Sep 12, 2020 | In July, 1906, Grandpa Blakeslee, successful farmer and businessman, shocks his two daughters and many of the townspeople of Cold Sassy Tree, Georgia, when he announces his intentions to marry in short order Miss Love Simpson, a milliner employed at his general store. Now, there were two reasons that this news was sending shock waves throughout the small community. One, besides the fact that Miss Simpson, was from the North, was that she was twenty years his junior, he being 59 and Miss Simpson in her late 30s or approximately the same age as his daughters. The second reason, probably more shocking, was the fact that Grandpa Blakeslee had only been a widower for three weeks since his beloved Mattie Lou died from a lengthy illness. Why...that violated the proper social rules for mourning. The events in Cold Sassy Tree that summer is told from the perspective of our novel's protagonist, Will Tweedy, a 14-year-old and grandson of the cantankerous subject of the town's gossip. It is a stretch to call this novel a coming-of-age story since it takes occurs over only a few months, but our protagonist learns much about what it means to be a family, the dangers of gossip, and the mercy of God's grace. As one would expect with a 14-nearing-15 adolescent, there is a number of humorous moments in store for the reader, even, if hard to believe, an encounter with a train on a trestle. If you grew up with or enjoy reruns of the Andy Griffith Show, I would recommend this frequently humorous but yet poignant short novel set in a small northeast Georgia town in simpler times. (  ) John_Warner | Jul 31, 2020 | Despite the main theme of death and how people deal with it personally and in community, this book manages to entertain with its spirited characters, spot-on Appalachian dialect, insights into small town life, and page after page of homespun humor. It's not a "nice story." This is a book that deals with the dark side of family life and flawed humanity, but it doesn't plunge the reader into despair because the evil is counterbalanced with lessons in love, mercy and forgiveness. Delighted to have run across this story. ( ) MMKY | Jul 3, 2020 | A year in the life of a 14yr old boy, wondering about life & wanting to be appreciated by his family, feeling closest to his grandpa. Mostly a compendium of the pranks Will pulled, by the time the tale got to the last quarter I was starting to get tired of the spitefulness & mean-spirited attitude of some people. Then it was all pulled together before the end by Grandpa's philosophical take on the true meaning of religion. A compassionate look at life in a southern small town in 1916. ( ) juniperSun | Jun 6, 2020 | Belongs to SeriesCold Sassy (1)
Modern times come to a conservative Southern town in 1906 when the proprietor of the general store elopes with a woman half his age, and worse yet, a Yankee. The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Will Tweedy is narrating the tale, telling about approximately one year, back when he was 14 years old, living in Cold Sassy, Georgia, in 1906. The central character of the book is Will's belligerent, demanding, outlandish, grandfather, who marries a woman who works in his store a few weeks after the death of his first wife. The scandal shocks the town and horrifies Will's mother, and his Aunt Loma. And that sets the first ball rolling for all that is yet to come. There are far too many little tales to mention them in a brief review. I would have liked to have gotten to know Lightfoot McClendon a little better though. (