Reunion Beach Stories inspired by Dorothea Benton Frank

When Dorothea Benton Frank died in 2019, she left behind the kernel of an idea, Reunion Beach. Here her writer friends take up the mantle. Patti Callahan has four old friends convening on a remote Low Country island to talk through a surprise proposal. Elin Hilderbrand revisits her characters from Summer of '69 (2019) at a bonfire that shakes up generations of the Foley-Levin family. Adriana Trigiani imagines Frank meeting old friend Pat Conroy in heaven, where a cornbread-making contest ensues. Mary Alice Monroe offers an affecting tale of the reunion between a librarian and her birth mother, and Cassandra King Conroy imagines a cooking-show family dinner gone hilariously wrong. The anthology is rounded out by remembrances from those whose lives Frank touched, including New Yorker copy editor and author Mary Norris and poet Marjory Wentworth, whose work served as epigraphs in Frank's books. And there are recipes, a fitting tribute to a woman who was as dedicated to throwing a good dinner party as she was to writing. This is a must-read for Frank's legion of fans, who will leave the book with a sense of the author as larger than life in her work, in her generosity, and in her personality.