Jill McCorkle - Ferris Beach

Praise forFerris Beach

Call Ferris Beach fine. Call it enchanting, touching, funny, tragic, sensitive, evocative, moving. Call it any synonym for wonderful, and you still wont be doing it justice.

The Houston Post

A really fine read... Jill McCorkle is a writer who has delivered on her earlier promiseand who promises still more.

The New York Times Book Review

McCorkle hits all the right notes.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Delightful... A novel about family secrets, identity crises, and mother-daughter standoffs.

Vogue

Whimsically entertaining and dramatically compelling.

The Boston Globe

Beautiful and inspired... Rich with interesting characters.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

McCorkle gets all the details right... She has written the kind of story that makes you smile with recognition even as it tries to break your heart.

The Orlando Sentinel

A mature novel, full of complexity and compassion.

The Village Voice

Gently funny and expertly crafted... Satisfyingly rich.

The Dallas Morning News

Believable and well rendered... Illuminate[s] both the sadness and the possibilities of renewal in relationships.

The Washington Post Book World

McCorkle writes with such insight into her characters that Ferris Beach is as personal as a letter and as visual as photos... Her skill at gently balancing humor and grief is masterful.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Delightful... [McCorkle] has talent and style.Detroit Free Press

A thoroughly believable picture of growing up in a middle-class small-town family in the New South, in the 60s and 70s, after the throes of integration... As convincing as though shed been lifting the story from her own teenage diary. The teenaged Kate Burns of Ferris Beach is a wistfully charming character.

San Francisco Chronicle

A many-layered and often mesmerizing novel.

The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star

McCorkle is a splendid writer... Ferris Beach is believable. And funny. And heartbreaking. But most of all, its a joy to read.

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Deep, rich and lyric.

The Palm Beach Post

McCorkle is a master... The charm of her vision stays with you long after the book is done.

The State (Columbia, SC)

McCorkle illuminates character with ironic humor and empathic insight.

Publishers Weekly

A beautiful and accomplished novel.

Memphis Commercial Appeal

With an unerring sense of pacing... McCorkle unfolds her story slowly but powerfully, and by the end, with profound and earnedemotion... Ferris Beach is a near-perfect example of a balanced story, with characters drawn from life and not from caricature.

Richmond News Leader

Endearing, evocative... Her writing is marked by a relentless curiosity and clear-eyed bluntness.

Chicago Tribune

Marvelous.Library Journal, starred review

A marvelously readable novel... Its characters are so real that we miss them when the last page has been turned.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

McCorkles writing shines... Her characters are finely drawn, funny, and right. Katie, the confused non-belle, rings true, and her story is as compelling as a soft southern night.

Kirkus Reviews

McCorkle is a strong character writer; she creates people who slip off the page into your memory when youre not looking.

San Diego Union-Tribune

McCorkles fiction is full of wonderful characters... Jill McCorkles little Bildungsroman of a woman of the New South is well worth reading.

Houston Chronicle

Whats delicious about Ferris Beach is Katies funny, sad and even frightening discovery of complex truths about people and herself... McCorkle captures whats unsaid, what her richly drawn characters feel, the emotional currents that tell them when somethings wrong or convince them that somethings perfect.

The Charlotte Observer

Well-drawn characters... Ironic humor... Accurate and sensitive portrayal of the adolescent experience... Quick, humorous dialogue.

The Grand Rapids Press

Impressive... McCorkle keeps getting better.

Booklist, starred review

Ferris Beach

ALSO BY JILL MCCORKLE

NOVELS

The Cheer Leader

July 7th

Tending to Virginia

Carolina Moon

STORIES

Crash Diet

Final Vinyl Days

Creatures of Habit

Going Away Shoes

Jill McCorkle

A NOVEL

Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

Copyright 1990 by Jill McCorkle.
First paperback edition, Fawcett, September 1991.
First Algonquin paperback, September 2009.
Originally published in hardcover by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1990.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Design by Molly Renda.

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
McCorkle, Jill
Ferris Beach : a novel / by Jill McCorkle.
p. cm.
ISBN-13 978-0-945575-39-9 (HC)
I. Title.
PS3563.C3444F4 1990
813.54dc20 90-37089 CIP
ISBN-13 978-1-56512-931-3 (PB)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

In celebration of Claudia and Rob

Our neighborhood was never the same after Misty Rhodes and her family moved in across the street. While my mother and our neighbor, Mrs. Theresa Poole, mourned the loss of the farmland and the barns and sheds dating back to the 1800s, I rejoiced in finally having the chance of someone my own age close by. The days of blindfolding myself and wandering around my room in Helen Keller simulation, spelling words into my own hand as I acted out Annie Sullivans role as well as Helens, were drawing to a close. Instead I perched by the window, watching as moving van after moving van came down our street.

The split-levels are coming! The split-levels are coming! Mrs. Poole had announced at a meeting of the historical society at which she and my mother and several others attempted to prevent the sale of the stretch of land in front of us. Known for her do-gooding and her white Lincoln Continental, Mrs. Poole was soon known as well for that proclamation.

Our own house was built in the early 1800s, and my mother had gone to great lengths to learn its history. There was a time when there was not another house within ten miles of this one, a state historian had told her when he came to photograph our house and list it on the state historical register. He gave her a lot of information which she carefully typed on heavy bond paper and filed away with all of her other historical information. My mother had grown up in Boston, and didnt live in the South until she was sent to a girls school in Virginia. She had many papers, like pedigrees, that told of various ancestors. The sharp edges of her accent had been filed down over the years, slowed and softened; they appeared only occasionally when she talked about raking the yard or playing cards or how life was hard.

You, Mary Katherine, have the best of both worlds, she told me the day we were pulling together all of the paperwork necessary for my joining the Children of the Confederacy. I was not thrilled over joining a club, but it was one of those times when it was just easier to go along with her. She had relatives who had served on both sides, so finding the name of the necessary ancestor was as easy as flipping open one of her books. I think her greatest ambition was that I, too, spend my summer mornings at little meetings where I had to dress as if it were Easter Sunday.