Leaving Cold Sassy

by: Olive Ann Burns

Published by: Mariner Books

Reviewed by C. L. Rossman

(LEAVING COLD SASSY is the unfinished sequel to Cold Sassy Tree with Reminiscence by Katrina Kenison)

After author Olive Ann Burns’ first book, Cold Sassy Tree, became an instant hit when it was published in 1984, it received overwhelming accolades from readers and critics across the country. Everyone wanted a sequel, and Burns, who was struggling with cancer and later, congestive heart failure, wanted to write it. But she was the world’s most particular writer: she had spent years writing and re-writing her first book, yet she hoped to have the sequel done by 1991. Bedridden for months at a time, finally losing her lifetime love, Andy Sparks, whom she’d met at The Atlanta Constitution and Journal, Burns fought against time to finish the sequel, called Time, Dirt, and Money.

But she had barely finished the first 14 chapters when she died quite suddenly at her and her husband’s mountain retreat—The Write House, in Commerce, Georgia. So Mariner Books has put together both books, Cold Sassy Tree and its unfinished sequel in two soft cover editions to be re-issued September 2007. There readers can at least get a glimpse into the lives of Will Tweedy and his bride, Sanna, ten years after the first book ended.

This is a more grownup Will talking, his dialect rectified by schooling, but his appetites for resistant women just as powerful as in his childhood. His stubbornness and determination to win Sanna remind us of his Grandpa Blakeslee’s stubbornness and determination to marry whomever he wanted, too. This book has no similar strong character like Grandpa to carry it, but Burn was planning to use Will’s Aunt Loma to take his place. How it would have turned out, we’ll never know.

But even more interesting than the fiction, I found Olive Ann’s biography written by her friend, Katrina Kenison, to be a wonderful insight into the author’s character, with all her quirks, optimism and determination.

Armchair Interviews says: read both books for a delightful journey into one writer’s character and her favorite people.