Sunset at Rosalie - Softcover

NOVEL BASED ON FAMILY STORIES RELIVES THE FAST-FADING GLORY OF THE OLD SOUTH

"Luminous evocations of the last days of Rosalie, a Mississippi plantation brought down by the collapse of 'King Cotton' in the early 1900s as observed by a young girl on the cusp of womanhood.A clear-eyed, loving but never sentimental look at the Old South as it tries to adjust to a new order."--Kirkus Reviews

Novelist Ann L. McLaughlin has drawn on stories told by her mother about growing up on a plantation in Mississippi as the basis for her third novel, Sunset at Rosalie. Inspired by family history, McLaughlin has woven her mother's tales together into a continuous plot charting the decline and fall of one plantation as King Cotton and the Deep South succumb to the boll weevil, soil depletion, and the rapidly changing social order.

Set in 19091912, Sunset at Rosalie recalls the seasons, the customs, and the people of the Deep South. At the center of the novel is Carlin McNair, a young girl on the brink of adolescence. Carlin has a crush on her dashing Uncle Will, who lives on a neighboring plantation. As Carlin grows through the seasons, she watches with alarm the sad decline of her beloved uncle as he battles with crippling depression and his failed dreams of agrarian reform. At the same time, she must learn to face the adult reality of hard economic times, seeing her parents adjust to poverty for the first time in their lives. Carlin also goes through the usual crises of early adolescence, as well the additional trauma of a bout with cholera that lasts almost a year.

In spite of these troubles, though, Carlin has the rewards of an inquiring mind and a desire to understand and appreciate her surroundings and to put her thoughts on paper. By the end of the novel, the culture she grew up in has changed forever, her Uncle Will is dead from suicide, her family is living in town in reduced circumstances, and her home, Rosalie, is in ashes. But she, Carlin McNair, has become a wise young woman with a future--as a writer, as a reformer, and as a chronicler of times gone by.

Praise for the novels of Ann L. McLaughlin

Lightning in July:

"This reader found the novel moving and full of the usable truth." --May Sarton

"A splendid accomplishment, a novel written from the heart and shaped with a fine intelligence."--Maureen Howard

"Ann McLaughlin has reached deep into her ragbag of old, often painful memories and transmuted them into a heart-warming novel."--Maxine Kumin

"A lovely book--wry, warm, and engaging."--Susan Richards Shreve

"McLaughlin's straightforward narration transforms the events of a prolonged hospital stay into a richly textured tale."--Publishers Weekly

The Balancing Pole

"The Balancing Pole treats a terrifying subject with wonderful lucidityin a narrative of spare and compelling elegance."--Jill Ker Conway

"Truly a powerful book and in its truthfulness much more than fiction."--Janet Lewis

"The Balancing Pole moves like a thriller."--The Radcliffe Quarterly

"Make no mistake about it, Ann McLaughlin has written a deeply moving, adroitly embroidered novel."--James Sallis, The Washington Post

"Sunset at Rosalie shimmers with the bittersweet magic of a young girl's coming of age amidst the disintegration of her family's traditional world. With exquisite delicacy, Ann McLaughlin interweaves the unfolding of Carlin's imagination and the economic collapse of her father's cotton plantation, and her words bring alive country life in Mississippi during the years before World War I... A pleasure to read, Sunset at Rosalie draws readers into the sights, textures, voices, and customs of a rural South precariously balanced between past and future. This is a novel that will linger in readers' minds like a cherished memory."

--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, author of Within the Plantation Household and "Feminism is Not the Story of My Life"

"A clear-eyed, loving but never sentimental look at the Old South as it tries to adjust to a new order."

--Kirkus Reviews

Ann L. McLaughlin is the author of the highly acclaimed novels Lightning in July and The Balancing Pole. She teaches at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and lives in Chevy Chase with her husband, a history professor.