MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
STEPHANIE GAYLE
ISBN# (10)0061236292/(13)9780061236297
June 2007
William Morrow, An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, New York 10022
Hardback
$23.95
244 pages
Fiction
Rating: 5 Cups

Natalie Goldberg has left a promising career as an attorney in the fast track corporate law field to be an assistant in the district attorney office in Macon, Georgia. She is trying to get her life back on track after a disastrous love affair. She lives with the fact her father will not speak to her for moving and her best friend wants her home. Her mother is a link to home that she bears with grace.

Carl, her boss, is always checking up on her work. He is single and around Natalie's age, which makes her cautious. He also has a habit of fidgeting when around her. He comes to her for help about his sister and they begin to find a way to get his sister away from her husband. But Carl has been keeping an eye on Natalie since she came to work for him.

Natalie begins to love her neighbors and the tight-knit community she now thinks of as her home. What will her parents and friends think if she decides to stay? She is determined to make a go of it and get her life back on course. With help from her neighbor, Natalie has begun to see that she can make a life in Georgia, and a good one at that. Her workload keeps her jumping and when she is made co-counsel for a murder trial, she knows it goes against everything she stands for, but she will do her job as best she can. Everything inside her screams for her to make a commitment, but can she honestly accept her current situation or does she want to move on?

Ms. Gayle has written a truly remarkable story. The life of a New Yorker transplanted to the south is vividly captured within the pages of 'My Summer of Southern Discomfort'. The trials and tribulations that Natalie experiences and the way people see her is too true in many small and semi-small southern communities. Being from the south myself, I can fully relate to all she is going through after her move. Ms. Gayle's story is brilliant and the character she has created in Natalie is one that any southern woman would love to know and call friend.

Liadan
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance
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