From Library Journal
Price (Beauty from Ashes, LJ 1/95), the grande dame of Southern romantic fiction, died shortly after completing this work. In her final novel, she tells the story of Abbie Allyn, a Boston socialite who marries an older man and moves to a small coastal Georgia town where her husband has purchased a rice plantation. When Abbie's husband, Eli, dies during a trip to purchase contraband slaves, she suddenly finds herself the owner of 100 slaves and a plantation whose workings she doesn't understand. Aided by Thad Greene, her handsome young overseer, Abbie learns rice culture and develops both a feminist and abolitionist conscience; predictably, she finds love as well. Fans of Price's previous novels will find all the hallmarks of her fiction here: considerable historical research, historical figures walking the streets, and a story imbued with inspirational Christian values. A required purchase wherever Price's novels are popular.
-?Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Price's thirty-ninth (and final--she died recently) book is set, like many of its predecessors, in Georgia's coastal lowlands. This time out, readers will meet transplanted Bostonian Abby Allyn, newly widowed at 31. Although she has lived in the town of Darien for five years, Abby apparently has never before considered what she lives on. It's not until the death of her older husband, whose closed mouth and deep pockets irritated Abby (never mind that some would consider these to be fine traits in a spouse!), that the reality of owning a rice plantation and 100 human beings hits home. A visit to her mother undams a torrent of ladylike abolitionist sentiment, and Abby returns to Darien determined to free her slaves. The heel-cooling period of the title refers both to Abby's need to work out the timing and legalities involved in freeing her slaves as war looms on the horizon, and to the official year of mourning that must pass before she can decently marry her secret beau, the plantation's handsome and voluble overseer. The book is undeniably corny, much of the dialogue reminds one of 10-year-old girls playing dress-up, but not without an innocent charm.
June Vigor
