“The Secret to Southern Charm,” by Kristy Woodson Harvey. Gallery Books. 2018. 365 pp.

By Deirdre Parker Smith

deirdre.smith@salisburypost.com

In this, the second book of her Peachtree Bluff series, Kristy Woodson Harvey gets personal.

Harvey is a charming young Southern woman, and she comes from a gracious family, people who are polite, well-dressed, well-read and thoughtful.

That’s the jumping off point for this book, the second of three about three sisters and their gracious Southern mother and grandmother.

Each woman faces challenges to her well-ordered life.

Mother Ansley is caring for her aging mother who has odd and sometimes disturbing memory lapses. She’s also trying to care for all three daughters, who have returned to the nest in need of TLC, support and advice. One of the loves of Ansley’s life is back, but he has a secret that could blow up the family dynamic.

In book one, “Slightly South of Simple,” Ansley’s daughters, Caroline (the prissy one), Sloane (the Army wife) and Emerson (the aspiring actress) have all shown up with a collection of problems.

Caroline’s rich husband has cheated on her in the most public way, but she is expecting their second child.

Sloane’s husband, Adam, has been deployed to Iraq, leaving her with their two young sons.

Emerson is making a movie about Caroline’s husband’s infidelity with a supermodel.

Naturally, all that could not be resolved in one book.

So Harvey has plotted three books, each one featuring Ansley — a bright, busy 58-year-old — and one of the daughters. “Slightly South of Simple” dealt with Caroline’s devastation over the affair, the birth of her son and her adjustment from high class city living to life back home in what is usually a sleepy coastal village with summertime tourists.

“Secret to Southern Charm” focuses on Sloane and her debilitating grief on learning Adam is missing in action, victim of a helicopter crash somewhere in Iraq.

Sloane is the one who needs serious help. She cannot just abandon her life, her children, because of Adam’s disappearance. Her sisters and her mother tell her this, but she’s in too much of a fog to hear them. Interaction is painful as she wallows in old love letters and videos of her intact family.

Sloane is incapable of taking care of her sons, so now Ansley is watching after them, too, helping with Caroline’s two, trying to rouse Sloane out of her nearly comatose state, nervously watching her mother and sorting out her feelings about Jack.

There are so many secrets in this house, it’s a wonder it doesn’t breathe them out late at night.

But Harvey doesn’t drop in complications just for the sake of them. What happens makes sense. Maybe the girls are a little spoiled and over-indulged, but maybe that’s the way they’ve always been.

A trip on Jack’s yacht to take Vivi to camp is a tad contrived. The point is to get Sloan up, out and away, so that when she returns, she will miss her children and begin to think about the future.

It turns out it’s also the time to reveal the peg for book three, which involves Emerson.

What happens to Ansley’s mother brings up the issue of caring for one’s parents while also caring for one’s children, and in this case, grandchildren.

And then there’s Jack, Ansley’s first love, still hanging around despite a firm no from Ansley, now widowed 16 years.

Caroline and James have begun to reconcile, but are not living together. He helps with the baby and tries to convince Caroline he is not just sorry, but lost without her.

Emerson is seeing more and more of her high school beau, Mark.

Jack is giving Ansley ultimatums, moving in next door, then threatening to move out.

Finally, Caroline, the impatient one, places an easel and paints in Sloane’s room. Painting is Sloane’s therapy, as well as her talent — but will it be enough to draw her back out?

Then readers discover what’s going on with Emerson, so that sets up book three.

Sad times are ahead for Ansley as her mother reveals her own secret.

Ansley’s mother, the matriarch, is there for a reason, and Ansley learns so much from her that she never understood, especially why her mother seemed so distant when Ansley’s husband, Carter, died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.

Ansley and her mother form a truce, find a peace together that might have eluded them.

Caroline begins to realize she at least trusts James to be a good father, even if she isn’t ready for a full reconciliation. The sisters together convince Emerson she must take action.

Sloane’s paintings not only give her a vehicle for her grief and anger, they are remarkable, and it looks as if they could be a vehicle for chage in her life.

But what about Jack and his secret? Worse yet, what about Jack and the Atlanta real estate agent? Is Ansley going to turn her back on happiness, or will she see that what she most fears may not be tso devastating?

Harvey, like any good novelist, sets this book up so you don’t have to read the first one, but reading both connects all the strings flailing around the lives of these charming Southern ladies.

She also leaves a major cliff hanger for book three, incentive to make readers wait impatiently for the next installment.

And she personalizes the book with the other thing she is known for — her design blog, Design Chic. If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting her immaculate home, you will recognize, for example the oyster shell chandelier in the book, the clear, bright aesthetic of Harvey’s own design theory.

Harvey draws mother Ansley so well that it seems she must have inspriation from her own mother.

Harvey herself is the mother of a young son, so the women she draws are extensions of her and the sisters she never had. So, if you’re a 30-something, you will enjoy seeing how these sisters manage their lives before their lives overwhelm them, and if you’re in your 50s, you can appreciate what Ansley is doing, giving and giving up, for her children and grandchildren, and why the daughters want her to be happy.

You know that together, these Southern women can face anything and come out stronger.