South Carolina

Neco said, "Sue Monk Kidd wrote The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid's Chair. Dorothea Benton Frank has written Sullivan's Island, Plantation, Shem Creek, The Land of Mango Sunsets, Isle of Palms, Pawley's Island, and Full of Grace. Of all the above books, I would most recommend Sullivan's Island or Plantation for strong South Carolina culture/setting fiction while still being light and easy reads and following a personal journey of the protagonist."

Why don't we start with the first ones on each list? In Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees Lily Owens is living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father. Lily has a blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was only four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, Rosaleen, a black woman who acts as her stand-in mother. After watching President Johnson on television as he signs the Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, she is arrested and Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina, a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey.

Sullivan's Island, set on the coast of South Carolina, opens with Susan walking in on her husband and his young lover, a shocking surprise to her and an annoyance to him. Susan throws them both out, packs her husband's toiletries, and begins a new chapter of her life. With the support of her sister, Susan's appreciation for her roots deepens as she tries to come to terms with divorce and raising a teenager. Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan's Island.