The Christmas Pearl
With her truculent family gathered at her stately Charleston mansion for Christmas, 93-year-old matriarch Theodora is having a hard time tolerating the lot of them. Theodora hankers for her 1920s childhood, when Pearl, the family's stern black maid, enforced strict houshold discipline and took no guff while working hard at Christmas, all the while singing gospel favorites such as Come en Go wid Me. When Theodora's usual maid is called away, Pearl herself (as a ghost) blows in, ready to set the house in order, She unearths the antique crèche and other Christmas heirlooms long buried, and altering the family's general bad temper. Frank (The Land of Mango Sunsets) includes homegrown recipes that further sweeten this Lowcountry holiday confection.(Nov.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.