Making Waves
Cassandra King, 1995, 2004
Hyperion
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780786891191
Summary
In a small Alabama town in Zion County, life is finally looking up for 20-year-old Donnette Sullivan.
Having just inherited her aunt's old house and beauty shop, she's taken over the business. Her husband Tim, recently crippled in an accident, is beginning to cope not just with his disability but also with the loss of his dreams. Once a promising artist who gave up art for sports, Tim paints a sign for Donnette's new shop, Making Waves, that causes ripples throughout the small southern community.
In a sequence of events—sometimes funny, sometimes tragic—the lives of Donnette, Tim, and others in their small circle of family and friends are unavoidably affected. Once the waves of change surge through Zion County, the lives of its people are forever altered. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1944
• Where—Lower Alabama, USa
• Education—B.A., M.A., Alabama college
• Currently—lives in the Low Country, South Carolina
Cassandra King is the author of five novels, most recently the critically acclaimed Moonrise (2013), her literary homage to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Moonrise is a Fall 2013 Okra Pick and a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) bestseller. It has been described as “her finest book to date.”
Fellow Southern writers Sandra Brown, Fannie Flagg, and Dorothea Benton Frank hailed her previous novel, Queen of Broken Hearts (2008), as “wonderful,” “uplifting,” “absolutely fabulous,” and “filled with irresistible characters.” Prior to that, King’s third book, The Same Sweet Girls (2005), was a #1 Booksense Selection and Booksense bestseller, a Southeastern Bookseller Association bestseller, a New York Post Required Reading selection, and a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Her first novel, Making Waves in Zion, was published in 1995 by River City Press and reissued in 2004 by Hyperion. Her second novel, The Sunday Wife (2002), was a Booksense Pick, a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week, a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month selection, a Books-a-Million President’s Pick, a South Carolina State Readers’ Circle selection, and a Salt Lake Library Readers’ Choice Award nominee. In paperback, the novel was chosen by the Nestle Corporation for its campaign to promote reading groups.
King’s short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Alabama Bound: The Stories of a State (1995), Belles’ Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women (1999), Stories From Where We Live (2002), and Stories From The Blue Moon Cafe (2004). Aside from writing fiction, she has taught writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, worked as a human-interest reporter for a Pelham, Alabama, weekly paper, and published an article on her second-favorite pastime, cooking, in Cooking Light magazine.
A native of L.A. (Lower Alabama), King currents lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy, whom she met when he wrote a blurb for Making Waves. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
You can't go wrong with this winner.
Birmingham News
[M]any surprising and remarkable moments in what must be hailed as a major novel of recent years.
Mobile Register
Zion is populated with plain-spoken eccentrics...the story blasts into a big finish.
Orlando Sentinel
Donnette and Tim have been sweethearts since childhood, but some folks in Zion County, Ala., don't think she's good enough for him. When a tragic accident ends Tim's chance for football greatness...Donnette snatches him up; they marry and buy her aunt's beauty salon.... Told in six chapters, narrated by four different characters, the novel offers a shifting moral landscape complemented by a sharp vision of Southern culture and life.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Though Donnette is 20 years old, her thoughts and behavior can be very childlike. How is this most strongly demonstrated? What could account for this quality in her?
2. What are some of the sensory clues provided by the author that this story takes place in the Deep South? The novels setting, in the tiny town of Zion, Alabama is crucial to the story. Can you imagine the events and characters taking place or existing anywhere else in the United States?
3. At no time in the story does the author indicate what is happening in the world outside Zion County. What is the significance of this?
4. What role does the beauty parlor play in the town’s affairs?
5. The author makes the affection between Tim and Taylor appear to border on homosexuality—or does she? What does Tim and Taylor’s youthful relationship say about the expression of friendship between men today in this country?
6. One of the central characters of the story, the football hero Tim, did not have a voice. What was the effect of having him seen only through the eyes of others?
7. What other novels use the device of having different characters tell the story through their own voice? Is this a peculiar feature of Southern writing, and if so, why is it so?
8. Do the transformation of Ellis from a drab mouse to a glamour puss, and her rejections of religious teachings seem plausible? Could she have been the backbone of the story? What other characters seem capable of taking over the story, or perhaps spinning off a new novel?
9. Presumably Tim’s artistic abilities were suppressed for the same reason that Tim and Taylor’s love for each other was—it wasn’t "manly." What other Southern writers are known for employing themes of repressed desires and frustration?
10. Did Making Waves alter your impressions of life in the Deep South in any way? What did you learn?
11. Miss Maudie’s funeral was the catalyst that starts the novel and brings Tim and Taylor back together. What other new beginnings came about as a result of the funeral?
(Questions from the author's website.)