On Folly Beach takes a young widow back in time as she discovers the love and loss of a South Carolina family through notes written in the margins of books.

One main theme of this book is knowing when one has waited long enough to move on after the loss of a loved one.  One of my  favorite quotes in the book was when Emmy’s mom said  “Love doesn’t have a time span.  Only pain does”  So true.

Book Club Party Ideas and Recipes

Music

The residents and military men of Folly Beach spend their weekends shagging on the pier to the music of Glenn Miller, The Drifters and Tommy Dorsey.    One of Maggie’s favorite dance songs was “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller.

In the book it mentions that shag is the South Carolina state dance.  Click here for instructions on how to shag.

What to Wear

Among Lulu’s treasures were a tortoise shell barrette and sand dollar earrings.  You can complete the look with a sand dollar bracelet, necklace and ring.  I found all my jewelry at a shack at the beach, so I linked some that I found on the internet.   For fun beachwear,  IslandSurf.com has a great selection (there is a free shipping coupon at the bottom of the post).

Decorations

Lulu loved her bottle trees.   She learned about bottle trees through Jim, who grew up on a plantation and would see slaves put bottles on trees to scare away evil spirits.  The  sunflower bottle tree below would be a fun and colorful decoration.  Don’t forget to stick notes in the bottles!

I wasn’t going to lug a bottle tree to the beach, so the table was decorated in a beach theme with sand dollars and colored (supposed to be sea) glass.   I also used a little glass jar of sand to represent the jar of sand from Folly Beach that helped remind Emmy’s mom where she came from.   Page told Emmy that she would always be able to come back home but “that would be a lot like planting a rose in the dessert; you’d survive but you’d never really bloom.”

The box that held Lulu’s treasures sounded so beautiful.  I searched the internet but could not find one similar to Lulu’s.  It was a lacquered box with hand painted flowers decorating the lid and a red velvet interior.  Any treasure box would be a great tabletop decoration along with sand dollar earrings, tortoise shell barrette, roller skate key, penny, handkerchief, lace hair ribbon, and a gold ring with a black onyx square on top.

My sister found the old rusted lighthouse at a garage sale, which reminded me of the old lighthouse in the book.

The military personnel and party goers on  Folly Beach Pier liked to drink Pabst Beer and Coca Cola, so I served these in a galvanized bucket.

Vintage Coca-Cola memorabilia would also make great decorations.   Coca Cola was a favorite drink in the book but they often weren’t able to enjoy it due to the sugar ration.  There was a Coca-Cola ice cooler in Folly’s Finds and Lulu would use the bottles for her bottle tree.  Click here for a DVD about the history of Coca Cola.

Menu

I based the menu on the food Peter and Maggie had on their first date:

• Fried Shrimp with Red Sauce. I also made some Tartar Sauce.  Gotta have tartar sauce with hush puppies.
• Hush Puppies
• Cole Slaw

I considered making turtle eggs, but that is probably outlawed in this day and age.

Dessert was Mini Blackberry Cakes with Blackberry (Mint) Tea, which is what Maggie and Peter had on their picnic.   You could also base your main menu on the food they had on their picnic which was fried chicken and unsweetened corn bread (because of the sugar ration).

Whenever I make a recipe I like to try to put the ingredients together in different ways for a more interesting presentation or because I want more of certain ingredients.  I also made a blackberry cake parfait with the same ingredients that you find in the mini blackberry cakes.

Blackberry Cake Parfait

Beyond the Book

During the 40s and 50s, Folly Beach Pier was the place to be.  There are several books about the history of Folly Beach:

• Folly Beach: A Brief History by Stringer-Robinson
• Folly Beach:  Glimpses of a Vanished Strand by Bill Bryan
• Edge of America:  Folly Beach, A Pictorial History by James William Hagy

Folly Beach is an island outside Charleston Harbor.  There were some restaurants mentioned in the book and I was surprised to see some of them actually existed, such as Folly Beach Crab Shack.  Andre’s was also a real restaurant, but has been replaced with a condo complex.

I loved the historical references in the book.  Here is a video of a divers filming a sunken German u boat off the coast of the Carolinas.  They really were there!  Here is also more information about the Duquesne spy ring.

Join Emmy and Heath and watch the 2010 Perseid meteor shower which should peak sometime around August 12.

Maggie’s favorite movie was Jezebel.  This would be a great movie, along with Gone with the Wind, to rent and have a night filled with self-absorbed southern belles.  Cat, the villain of the book,  liked to imitate Scarlett O’Hara’s facial expressions….beeatch.

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