We stayed in touch via email and Facebook. When Dottie learned that I was working on a book about Greek, she told me that the protagonist of her latest book was from Corfu. At a book festival in Savannah, she met Colson Whitehead and Jay McInerney, who she thought might be a cousin. She was a big fan of other writers. Her twelfth Lowcountry tale, Queen Bee, came out a few years later, in May of 2019, and Dottie was all over Facebook and Twitter promoting it. That August, I saw a note on her Facebook page from her family, stating that she was in the hospital. Less than three weeks later, on September 2, 2019, came the announcement that she had died, of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a bone-marrow condition, at the age of sixty-seven. Tens of thousands of people expressed their sadness on her Facebook page; the memorial service, at Grace Church Cathedral in Charleston, was sure to be mobbed. Luckily, those of us who could not make it to Charleston had only to open a book to be with Dottie. In her breakthrough novel, Sullivan’s Island, the plucky narrator, Susan, gets a job as a columnist for the Post and Courier, and when her teenage daughter—impressed, for a change—asks her what she’ll do if she ever has to write about death, she replies, “That may possibly be the toughest question I’ve had to answer all day, but even death has humor, wakes and funerals especially. I guess I’d advise people not to take hams to the bereaved.”
About Mary Norris
MARY NORRIS joined the editorial staff of The New Yorker in 1978 and was a copy editor and proofreader there for more than thirty years. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she lives in New York and Rockaway.
Also by Mary Norris
Greek to Me
Between You & Me
Making of a Friendship
Jacqueline Bouvier Lee
I remember the first time I saw Dorothea Benton Frank, I thought I had won the grand prize by being able to attend one of the biggest book events in the United States. Little did I know the real gift was about to come into my life dressed in pearls and a crisp white shirt.
The size of the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City is overwhelming, and this Southern girl was just excited to be at a book event in the middle of Manhattan. Book Expo America is the largest annual book trade fair in the United States and many up-and-coming authors as well as established authors are seated at booths to showcase upcoming titles.
I was new to the book business and I needed authors. I knew that event was the place to find them. I walked the aisles scouting authors and handing out cards trying to make deals with writers who I thought would be a good fit for my South Carolina store. Later I would find out how author tours actually worked; to say I was “green” was an understatement.
I had been told I needed some strong authors if I wanted to jump-start my career as a community relations manager. Not one soul was interested in coming to the Carolinas to do an author signing. I decided to take a break, grab some lunch, and regroup. Fully nourished I said a little prayer that maybe the afternoon would be kinder to my pursuit.
I continued my trek among the hundreds of bibliophiles, some carrying suitcases to take home all of their treasures. I make a right turn and hear a woman talking to an eager reader about peaches and using the word “ya’ll.” When I saw the large pearls around her neck I knew we would be friends forever.
I listened as her fans regurgitated different stories word for word from her books. They knew her characters, they knew the different islands Dottie so vividly described in her books, and they all seemed to know about the infamous toothbrush scene from her first book. That toothbrush came up several times, as it would throughout the many years we spent together.
Finally it was my turn to meet this vision of Southern loveliness. I explained who I was and which big box book company I worked for. I explained what I was trying to do and gave her my card.
The first words out of her mouth were I would be glad to come to your stores, she promptly gave me her email address and phone number, and the rest as they say is book history.
That first signing was a doozy! We held it in Florence, South Carolina, a store that I later found out was much too small of a venue for Dorothea Benton Frank. There were so many people in that store that I am sure we were breaking the fire code. She never flinched or said anything to me about not having enough chairs. Instead she regaled the audience with stories of how she would accompany different members of her family from Sullivan’s Island to Florence to buy false teeth. The audience loved it and roared with laughter, and each one had to tell her their favorite story about false teeth as they came through the line. One lady even took hers out of her mouth to show Dorothea what a good job they had done.
That was one of many of Dorothea’s superpowers: she was relatable and her fans loved that about her.
Dorothea was always there to help you if you needed something (superpower number two). I can’t tell you how many times her fans would come through the line and say they needed help with a charity event, or that a local library might be closing. She always asked what could she do to help?
I loved how warm and funny Dorothea was, she was that way to each and every person she ran into. A lot of people I have worked with over the years are one way to the fans and a completely different unlikable person once the camera’s stopped rolling, but not Dorothea. To this day I have never met any other celebrity that has invited hundreds of their fans to their home. She was not fussy as people made their way upstairs to the guest rooms or opened the door to her refrigerator to see what she had inside. She wanted them there and they were her friends. She would give you the shirt off her back and ask for nothing in return. That beach house felt like “our” house. I remember saying I was so exhausted after a couple of surgeries and she offered her guest house to me. When I asked her when she would be arriving she said the house is yours, and gave me the code to the gate (superpower number three).
Dottie was a wonderful human being, kind and helpful, and if she dreamed it, she found a way to bring it to fruition (superpower number four), and if you dreamed it, and were willing to put in the work, she helped make your dreams come true as well. She is responsible for my book career being so successful—once she came to my stores other publishers started calling me and sometimes the authors themselves reached out to me. When I left the book business and decided to go work at a country club, she told me point-blank you will not like it. And she was right. It was not for me.
Her family was very important to her (superpower number five); our daughters are around the same age and we often shared stories over dinner of how we were raising our girls. She loved fiercely and cared for my child as well. I will never forget how she called me twice a day until my daughter came through a very difficult surgery.
We have been through good times and bad, she has given so much advice, helped so many people, to say I miss her is an understatement.
Queen, you came and did your thing, you have left us with the tools we need to get through this thing called life, rest well; we got it from here.
Dottie: The Sparkling Comet
Gervais Hagerty
There is a tribe of women writers in Charleston. They are bound together like chapters in a hardback. When a tribe member releases a book, Nathalie Dupree throws a party.
My mother, a poet, had been taking me to these celebrations long before I understood how lucky I was to be included. My most salient first memory of speaking with Dottie occurred in Nathalie’s lemon yellow dining room, where guests smeared homemade pimento cheese dip on crumbly made-from-scratch biscuits. I was a teenager; Dottie spoke to me as though I was an adult. “Either your face can look good, or your ass can look good, but you can’t have both.”
Ha!
I knew Dottie was a bestseller, but I was confused because from what I learned in high school English, writers weren’t happy. They hid in the corners of their rickety homes, tied to their typewriters by cobwebs. They chewed their fingernails to nubs agonizing over metaphors and forgot to check for boogers before speaking engagements.
&
nbsp; And here was Dottie, this sparkling comet whizzing around the party, laughing and cracking jokes. Wasn’t the writing life a slog? Dottie looked like she was having fun. That left an impression on me.
The last time I spoke with Dottie was also at Nathalie’s. We were in the front parlor, a quieter room separated from the food and drink by the blockade of newcomers in the foyer. Dottie was with her daughter, Victoria. They sat side-by-side, shoulder to shoulder, their arms bent in perfect parallel. I remember thinking how close they seemed.
I had finished a draft of my first novel—written from the point of view of one person—and was planning my second book. I had a question; I might as well ask a master storyteller. “Should I write from multiple points of view?”
Dottie smiled a big, red-lipsticked smile. The diamonds on her ears winked like stars. “Oh, yes. That way they can keep secrets from each other.”
I have the privilege and honor to work with Dottie’s longtime editor, Carrie Feron. On our phone calls, we often end up talking about Dottie, and when we do, the energy changes. Even with hundreds of miles between us, I can feel a celestial shift, like I’ve floated into the wake of their deep and enduring kinship. Carrie adored Dottie. I think for many people, it was impossible not to.
After I submit my copyedits for my first novel, I’ll get back to working on book number two, which, of course, has multiple points of view. Thanks to Dottie’s advice, there are constellations of secrets. And, following her example, I’m having a whole lot of fun.
About Gervais Hagerty
Gervais Hagerty by Gayle Brooker
GERVAIS HAGERTY grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. After reporting and producing the news for both radio and television, she taught communications at The Citadel. When not writing, she works on local environmental and transportation issues. She lives in Charleston with her husband and two daughters.
Also by Gervais Hagerty
In Polite Company
Essay and Poetry by Marjory Wentworth
MARJORY WENTWORTH
Essay
I met Dottie in the early 2000s at a party on a Saturday evening. I was first introduced to her husband, Peter. He told me that he traveled a lot for work and that he likes to read poetry on airplanes, because he could read in bits and pieces when it was quiet, and it really gave him something to think about. He seemed interested in my work, and I told him that it was part of the wall text at the Gibbes Museum of Art in an exhibition on the ACE Basin. He flipped when I told him that and he said that his wife, Dottie, had just finished a novel called Plantation set in the ACE Basin. He ran off to find her; she was talking to my husband, who is also named Peter! We spoke briefly, and I must have given her my card. She was so excited to hear about the ACE Basin Exhibition, which was closing the next day.
Sure enough, Dottie went to see/read my poems at the Gibbes Museum, bought my first book, and showed up at my door on Sullivan’s Island with the book and a bottle of wine and she asked me if she could include one of my poems in the front of her forthcoming novel, Plantation. It was as if we had both been writing about the same place at the same time. Dottie said that I could say everything she wanted to say in just a handful of words. So, my poem “River” appeared in the front of Dottie’s novel Plantation. The first print run was 800,000 copies. That’s a lot of eyes on a poem!
We became fast friends, and after that I was sent galleys and wrote the poem after reading the draft of Dottie’s novels: Shem Creek, Isle of Palms, Pawley’s Island, etc. It was such an honor to be included in her books, and I am forever grateful. I used to tell people that Dottie was my biggest fan, and she was. When I was appointed Poet Laureate of South Carolina in 2003 she sent me a case of wine and a set of wineglasses engraved with the words “Sullivan’s Island”; she framed and proudly displayed the broadside of the first inaugural poem I wrote, “Rivers of Wind.”
Our children became friends and remain friends today. Victoria’s first prom date was with my son Hunter, and my son Taylor was an usher in Liam’s wedding. Dottie and Peter folded us into family gatherings and other occasions. The love and generosity were boundless. A couple of years after we met, my husband and I had serious pneumonia at Thanksgiving. Not only did Dottie drop everything and make homemade chicken soup to “cure” me, she and her sister Lynn made an entire Thanksgiving dinner for our family and brought it over to our house. I can still remember listening to Dottie on the phone telling our son Hunter how to baste a turkey.
My heart is filled with memories of my dear friend. I miss her so much, and I still pick up my phone to call or text her and then I remember that she’s gone. I open one of her books; I hear her husky voice reading the passage. I see her beautiful smile, and she is with me, and we are laughing like we always did.
Poems
“REUNION BEACH”
The sea is calling us
home. There is nothing
stronger than that
pull; each wave dispelling
the patient passage
of time. No
beginning, no end
in the horizon’s blur,
where gull feathers
and stars are caught
in wind, swirling
above miles of sand
holding a crush
of memories.
Sandpipers scattered
at the edges
of low tide; green
ribboned steams
of seaweed
sliding
beneath your feet
as you took your first
stumbling steps
toward the sweep
of sea. Your mothers’
hands on either side
holding you up
like warm wings.
So many hours
lost in the long
sun, dribbling
watery sand
onto castle walls
gathering shells in buckets.
A red sneakerful carried
home, where bleached star-
fish lined windowsills
and brown conches circled
the garden like guards.
Your favorite grey whelk
held to your ear
before you could sleep.
You learned patience, walking
slowly through shallow water
until you found the row
of sand dollars, cold
beneath your feet,
picking one up with your toes
holding it like a prize.
Summer days spinning
cartwheels in one direction,
body surfing until the sun
dissolved over the city
and shrimp boats
lit up in a line like
a string of low-lying stars.
Carving the name
of your first crush
into the hard sand
far from the tide line,
you smoked your first Marlboro
on the overgrown path
through wondering dunes.
Standing at water’s edge
with your school friends,
you watched blue and rust
cargo ships slide by the island,
wondering what lay below,
dreaming of wherever
they came from.
You brought us
the world
of this island,
its wax myrtles
and palmettos,
pelicans
flying low
along the shoreline—
each beloved object
of your home place
lining the pages
of your stories
like sand scattered
between sentences.
We will return
in September,
the month of your birth,
the month
of your death.
We will retrace your
footsteps, watch
and out of waves, as if
they are following us,
hear your laughter as gulls
call back and forth
beneath wisps
of clouds, where we
will see you
in the radiant light.
“RIVER” FROM PLANTATION
The river is a woman who is never idle.
Into her feathering water
fall petals and bones
of earth’s shed skins.
While all around her edges
men are carving altars,
the river gathers flotsam,
branches of time, and clouds
loosening the robes of their reflections.
Her dress is decoupage—
yellow clustering leaves,
ashes, paper, tin, and dung.
Wine dark honey for the world,
sweet blood of seeping magma
pulsing above the carbon starred
sediment. Striped with settled skulls,
wing, and leaf spine: the river
is an open-minded graveyard.
Listen to the music
of sunlight spreading
inside her crystal cells.
Magnet, clock, cradle
for the wind, the river holds a cup
Reunion Beach Page 27