Pamela Duncan, The Big Beautiful

The Big Beautiful

Pamela Duncan

Dial, Mar 27 2007, $14.00

ISBN: 0385338384

As her family looks on and her father A.J. encourages her to take a dump or get off the pot, Cassandra Moon thinks of Pride and Prejudice and her dad's last second "advice." Dennis waits at the altar to exchange vows, but instead Cassandra flees from the rural Western North Carolina church and steals his limo that he was going to use to take them to Asheville for their honeymoon.

Cassandra drives across the Tarheel state to the ocean where she stops at Salter Path for no reason except that she is drunk, half stuck in the sun roof, and thinks the next landmass is Portugal and she has no passport. There the overweight, fortyish Cassandra muses that there must be more to life than she has lived as she wants her own Darcy to love and to be loved. Apparently the townsfolk knew her mother Marvelle so they adopt Cassandra while Hector the sea captain keeps giving her that Darcy look of desire.

Though the rural Carolina dialogue takes some getting used to, the adjustment is worth the time as this sequel to the MOON WOMEN is a well-written character study of a person seeking her niche in life. Cassandra is an interesting protagonist but in many ways the geo-eccentric townsfolk of Salter Path steal the show with home grown wisdom that they try to pass on to the confused visitor. Regional contemporary fiction readers will enjoy Cassandra's odyssey.

Harriet Klausner