Almost immediately the narrative falters. He meets Sanna, the new schoolteacher who will soon be his wife. The text of what would have been Olive Burns’ second novel starts out with a lovely first chapter-Will Tweedy visits a social, where cars park carefully away from everything so as not to stir up dust or scare the horses. Sanna will stay with him because an imperfect marriage is better than a divorce.īut this volume should have a readership beyond besotted fans who “need a sequel.” This book is about subtext, about how writing functions in a writer’s life, about how women writers see themselves, how all writers see themselves and about how success can be as disconcerting as failure. He marries a fretful girl named Sanna, has four children in quick succession, and-according to the notes-will end up philandering both with his old girlfriend Trulu and with someone new called Norma. If, indeed, there are fans-readers who absolutely must find out what happened to Will Tweedy (that 14-year-old grandson), the news isn’t very good. What we have in this volume is 141 pages of text (they call it 15 chapters, but that 15th chapter is pretty iffy), 17 pages of notes and fragments, and a 159-page reminiscence by Katrina Kenison, who became both editor and friend to Burns. She had created a wow of a book, and the book-her readers and her publishers decided-demanded a sequel.

Olive Burns, in this publication process, became a cash cow. (And to a time when adventure seemed to be somehow within everyone’s grasp.) The reason adventure was possible was of course because everyone was interesting-life itself was interesting-unsoiled, unspoiled. If we could only go back to those days when, in little towns, everyone knew everybody else, and everyone was somebody. The action was seen through the eyes of Will Tweedy, his 14-year-old grandson.īut the plot was not the thing with “Cold Sassy Tree.” It was the evocation of a world-lost, gone but still with us in so many ways-that turned its readers to melted butter. The plot concerned a feisty granddad who, when his wife died, mourned for three weeks and then married a perky milliner about three decades his junior. The book sold and sold and would not stop selling.

“Cold Sassy Tree,” a sweet, funny, “Southern” book, inspired unreasonable affection from all sorts of fans.

Burns was 60 and had written her novel under the constant, bullying threat of lymphoma. Olive Ann Burns’ first novel, “Cold Sassy Tree,” was published in 1984.

Cold sassy tree sequel