The Spirit of Sweetgrass
In an enjoyable debut novel, Seitz offers an interesting first-person narrative about the life (and seemingly, the afterlife) of an elderly Gullah-Creole basket weaver. By the side of Highway 17 in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina sits 78-year-old Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins, crafting baskets of sweetgrass and talking to her dead husband Daddy Jim. Relations are strained with her daughter Henrietta, who thinks Essie belongs in a retirement center. If Essie can’t pay $10,000 in back taxes to save her home, she may have no choice. More tensions: her grandson EJ wants to marry a white girl, Essie discovers that a handsome man she’s trying to find a girl for is gay, and her daughter carries a hidden secret. When Essie hopes she’ll die and go to heaven, the book shifts less successfully to the afterlife, where her Gullah-Creole ancestors surround her and she’s reunited with Daddy Jim. Together, they team up to return to Earth and battle two spirits conjured up by Henrietta’s voodoo that threatens to ruin an attempt to save the sweetgrass basket weaving culture. Although uneven after a strong start, the first-person narrative in heavy dialect is engaging and readers will enjoy the bits of Gullah culture and history salted throughout.