Please welcome author and southern belle, Susan Boyer!
Longing for Faith
I grew up in Faith, North Carolina, a small town forty-five minutes northeast of Charlotte. It was one of those towns where folks—at that time—didn’t lock their backdoors unless they were going on vacation.
Daddy would get put out with Mamma if she did not leave the keys in the car and he thus had to hunt for them.
The population in Faith has grown since I was a child. Back then it hovered just over 600, and today some 739 souls call the town home. Some days I get real homesick because I’m not one of them.
Faith has three churches, but only a single caution light. The Soda Shop has delicious down-home specials—you can eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner there any day but Sunday.
If you order tea, it will be sweet unless you ask for unsweetened.
Every year Faith hosts a Fourth of July celebration that draws thousands.
When I was a child, I’d decorate my bike with the other kids and ride in the parade. As a teenager, I twirled my baton with the other majorettes and marched in front of the band.
In 1992, the first President Bush made a campaign stop at the Faith Fourth of July celebration. I guess that’s the most excitement the town’s ever had.
But Faith has things more compelling than excitement. Faith is that town where you know your neighbors, and you stop to talk with them when you pass them on your morning walk.
Faith is a community small enough that you feel connected—the number of connections is manageable. There’s overlap between your family, your church family, your neighbors, your friends from work, your friends from high school, et cetera.
In larger towns and cities, often these are altogether separate groups of people. I sometimes wonder if the effort to stay connected to ever more people is the underlying reason so many of us feel the world spins faster these days.
I moved away a long time ago, but my parents still live in Faith, and when I talk about “going home,” everyone who knows me knows I mean I’m going to Faith, though I’ve lived in South Carolina for quite a spell. in Mt. Pleasant, SC.
We loved everything about lowcountry living—well, except perhaps the bugs and the humidity, but those things fade in my memories.
Work took us back to the Upstate, and Greenville, SC, is where our children call home. Greenville is a lovely place to live. Trees shade the vibrant downtown area. Falls Park in the West End combines lush landscaping and a state-of-the-art walking bridge over the falls of the Reedy River.
Greenville represents the New South to me in so many ways. Grits are still a staple and Southernese the official language, but so many folks have moved in from all over, Greenville sports a touch of cosmopolitan.
You can walk down Main Street and feast on specialties from virtually any region of the world, usually prepared by immigrants from the respective region.
The Peace Center offers Broadway shows, ballets, operas, and all manner of cultural entertainment. We have our own minor league baseball team and lively street festivals, like Fall for Greenville, and Artisphere. Greenville is a fabulous southern small city. And yet…
You can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl. Even though I know it’s not practical for us, many days I want to move home. I crave that small-town life I left behind. My writing reflects that longing.
My debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, is in many ways, a love letter to small towns in the South. My main character, Liz Talbot, moves home from Greenville, to the town she grew up in. I should tell you that Liz isn’t me—she’s a private investigator. And the town she goes home to isn’t Faith—it’s Stella Maris, an island I created and situated just north of Isle of Palms, near Charleston.
Did I mention how I loved the lowcountry?
But the fabric of life in a small town is a central theme of Lowcountry Boil, and all the books in the Liz Talbot Mystery series. I miss that feeling of connectedness every day. Which is why I go to that island in my mind as often as I can. I hope you’ll come visit.
Susan M. Boyer has been making up stories her whole life. She tags along with her husband on business trips whenever she can because hotels are great places to write: fresh coffee all day and cookies at 4 p.m. They have a home in Greenville, SC, which they occasionally visit. Susan’s short fiction has appeared in moonShine Review, Spinetingler Magazine, Relief Journal, The Petigru Review, and Catfish Stew. Her debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, is a 2012 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense recipient and an RWA Golden Heart® finalist.