Beyond Molasses Creek by Nicole Seitz

This novel grabbed me at the first chapter and didn't let go until the final page.

Ally is a sixty year old world-weary ex-flight attendant. She has come back to her home to bury her father. From across the creek comes Vesey.

All of the memories come back. Seeing him for the first time, across the creek, a black boy, fishing. It was the fifties and it was the south. Nevertheless, Ally and Vesey became friends, managing to sneak in a boat ride from time to time. They get caught one too many times and Vesey's mother sends him off to an uncle. Ally is broken-hearted and ashamed that Vesey was punished.

Seitz does a great job of weaving the past within the present. We see Ally go off to college, then decide to be an airline stewardess. A fling with a pilot and she is pregnant and abandoned by him. She goes back home to have the baby, a daughter. She finds Vesey has married and they are expecting a child.

Running from the pain, she is in Nepal when her baby is stolen.

Now, nearly forty years later she is back home. Vesey's wife has died. Ally has lost her daughter. Vesey knows the Lord and has peace. Ally has collected statues of gods and has yet to find her peace. Will she ever be able to stop running?

Setiz has crafted a captivating story beginning in the south when civil rights was new and troublesome and ending at a time when friends can be of different races and continents.  Some readers may be disappointed that the searching Ally does not get saved in the end.  Christianity is well represented but the novel is not neatly tied up, so to speak.
I like the way she writes.  This was a very enjoyable read.

Nicole Seitz is a South Carolina low country native, the author of several novels and articles published in numerous low country magazines. She has a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor's degree in illustration from Savannah College of Art & Design. Nicole shows her paintings in the Charleston area, where she owns a web design firm and lives with her husband and two small children. Find out more at www.NicoleSeitz.com.

Thomas Nelson, 305 pages.  Publisher information. 


I received a complimentary copy of this book from Thomas Nelson for the purpose of this review.