It’s been five years since Greenville author Mindy Friddle moved to the coast, 15 years since her last novel, but there’s something of home indelibly present in Her Best Self, coming May 21 from Regal House Publishing. It’s more than the familiar Main Street shops, the pickled peaches on your lunch plate, the proximity of the mountains or the rattle of the train. It’s like when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think of your grandmother, a flutter of ghost movement and history in the present tense, a different kind of knowing that comes from seeing something over a lifetime.
Mindy thinks a lot about what makes a good Southern novel, and that relationship with place is significant. “South Carolina was the number one state last year for people moving in from other places. And you wonder, is that going to change the culture, having all this influx of people. I think in rural areas, especially.”
Mindy started her writing life at Furman’s Paladin school paper, moving on to the Hemingway Weekly Observer, the Florence Morning News, then freelancing for The State in Columbia while she furthered her degrees at USC. She’s seen and heard stories all across the state. And while she might have been thinking of Travelers Rest when she created the town of Haven and the Wolf family within it, she doesn’t feel the need to be faithful to a single spot on the map when setting her fiction. In fact, doing so might miss the point.
In Her Best Self, the Wolf family is preparing for the wedding of Mira and Nelson, a celebration that will hopefully camouflage the secretly faltering family business, Rex Wolf Staffing. Salvation depends upon Teddy Rex, Mira’s childhood crush, stepping in to share the helm with her father, Charles. And Teddy’s pearl-clutching wife Reagan is directing the rebranding of the company, which means she’s also directing Mira’s wedding, from cake to country club, whether the happy couple likes it or not.
The bump in the road, the elephant in the corner, and the story’s most dynamic character is Janelle Wolf, wife and mother, who hasn’t been the same since a mysterious car accident 30 years ago. But Janelle is going to fix that. She hires a dubiously Eastern healer named Lana, and pays her with the family jewels, in order to get back to “Janelle Before” in time for the wedding.
Of course, the past has been lost for a reason, and the present begins to unravel as it returns. But Friddle’s focus stays true to the complicated dynamics of this family. It’s another central element of Southern literature for her, the partnership between dysfunction and good manners. “That courtesy preserved relationships and alleviated tensions, but it’s also enabled us not to face up to some things until recently, things around race, and women.”
Those ideas were percolating when she first began thinking about Janelle and her marriage. “I was inspired by this old cookbook I inherited that was published in the ’60s, Good Housekeeping. It was telling the housewife how to cook for her husband and her husband’s boss, and how to cook for the family, and how occasionally you can let him cook, but only if it’s barbecue.”
What started as a funny timepiece took on greater weight. “I found this clipping embedded in the cookbook and it’s about Sandra Day O’Connor being appointed to the Supreme Court. It was all about how she and her husband liked to go ballroom dancing, how they entertained, not her intellect or anything. For a lot of women, that was a big step. And that’s why somebody had saved that clipping.”
That clipping makes an appearance in the novel itself, one of several articles and reports that give context to the events unfolding, a nod to the newswoman Friddle once was, and a propellant to the page-turning writer she’s become. As Janelle begins to understand what’s happened to her, the truth ripples through her family and the town of Haven, changing the landscape for better and worse, changing it for everyone.
Mindy Friddle will be in conversation with Scott Gould at M. Judson Booksellers on Tuesday, June 4, at 5:30pm.
A Closer Look at Regal House Publishing
This powerhouse of an independent press just celebrated ten years of author-focused publishing in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founder Jaynie Royal set out to offer fair, friendly, and transparent partnership between author and publisher in the book industry; it’s an idea that’s ahead of its time and one that’s grown exponentially on those principles. Their Sour Mash Series, featuring new Southern voices, is of particular strength.
In the next year, Regal House will publish these Southern stories:
- The Late Rebellion by Mark Powell
- Kings of Coweetsee by Dale Neal
- Can’t Shake The Dust by CH Hooks
- The Moon Won’t Talk by Morgan Howell
- Upon The Corner of The Moon by Valerie Nieman
- Peace Like A River by Scott Gould
- Angels At The Gates by Sheri Joseph
