Baby, Drive South (Southern Roads, Book 1) by Stephanie Bond
When I think about Georgia, I think of delicious ripe peaches, crunchy Vidalia onions, the siege of Atlanta from Gone with the Wind, “Georgia on My Mind,” and the Weather Channel. I don’t necessarily think about tornadoes. However, twisters are evidently not unheard of down there in the Peach State, and it’s a big one—an F5, to be precise—that sets the stage for Stephanie Bond’s new Southern Roads trilogy (two books out, one forthcoming), which details the efforts of three brothers to rebuild their small Georgia hometown after a tornado flattens it.
Obviously, tornadoes have been very much in the news this year. Whether or not the sobering pictures on the evening news inspired Bond I couldn’t presume to say, but what I can say is that in Book 1, Baby, Drive South, Bond serves up a regular low country boil, combining ingredients from numerous subgenres—Disaster, (Modern) Pioneer, Military Man, Opposites Attract, Plain Girl Falls for Hot Guy, maybe even a dash of Mail-Order Bride—into a tasty dish that had me groaning with indigestion even as I was demanding another heaping serving.
I had a real love-hate relationship with this thing, in other words.
When our story begins, the three Armstrong brothers—humorless and overly responsible eldest Marcus, charming and somewhat cocky baby Porter, and even-keeled middle child Kendall, ruggedly handsome military veterans all—have returned to the ruins of Sweetness, the aforementioned hometown, having secured a large government grant to rebuild the town as a wind-powered recycling mecca (Sweetness is “The Greenest Town in America”). They have hired a large crew to shore up the local infrastructure, but alas, the only woman in town is hard-nosed Colonel Molly, who runs the local dining hall (and not terribly effectively at that). So over Marcus’s protests (he protests about a lot of things), Porter and Kendall place a newspaper ad in economically depressed Broadway, Michigan, a less random choice than initially appears, inviting interested single women to join the men of Sweetness on the adventure of a lifetime…
…And, despite a complete lack of explanation regarding what’s in it for them, the women arrive—a whole caravan, all at once. Porter, who is working atop the town water tower that day, sees them coming up the road and gets so excited that he falls and breaks his leg. Fortunately for him, the caravan includes a doctor, one Nikki Salinger, who has come south to escape a faithless fiancé and make a new life for herself.
Of course Porter bungles things; he addresses Nikki as “Little Lady Doc,” suggests that she’s a lonely cat-woman, and later, while doped up on painkillers, steals a kiss. For her part, Nikki is instantly miserable: Porter is obnoxious (and yet so very appealing), the food is awful, the medical facilities nonexistent, the other women silly, and the lack of hot water a continuing nuisance. The men are old-fashioned and reluctant to be treated by a female doctor. And then her car breaks down (actually, Porter tampers with it to prevent her from leaving, because Sweetness needs competent medical personnel so badly and also because he’s in love and doesn’t want her to leave, but she doesn’t realize any of that until late in the game), so she’s trapped. And then Colonel Molly explains to Nikki, in all seriousness, that she (Nikki) is so uncomfortable in Sweetness because Southerners just feel things so much more deeply than she’s accustomed to. Ah, yes, everyone knows about us cold and unfeeling northern girls who just need some hot Southern love to loosen us up. Does anyone have a barf bucket handy?
By this point in the book, I was ready to jump in my car, drive to Sweetness, and rescue poor Nikki myself. But just as I was preparing to throw in the towel and find something less infuriating to read, something peculiar happened: I started to root for Porter and Nikki. I couldn’t help myself. He was such a doofus! And she was so competent! And the town needed her so much, and the scenery was so scenic, and the other ladies were actually kind of funny and nice. And then she found Porter’s mother’s wedding ring (which had been lost in the storm), and he was so pretty and charming all the time, and her ex-fiancé was such a jackass, and they were obviously so hot for one another, and before I knew it I was tearing through the pages because I just had to know whether, when, and how the two found their way to one another.
To find out how Porter convinces Nikki to stay in Sweetness (hint: he’s a master of the Grand Gesture), you’ll need to read the book. To find out why the Armstrong brothers placed their ad in that particular and specific Michigan town, why the normally sweet and even-tempered Kendall is acting so cranky, and whether or not the stick is ever removed from Marcus’s well-toned derriere, you—by which I also mean I—will need to read the sequels. Book 2, Baby, Come Back, is on my nightstand right now, and I look forward to downing it in a single gulp, swearing in frustration at the characters even as I fall hopelessly in love with them.
And Heaven help me but when Book 3, Baby, Don’t Go, appears in bookstores this fall, I’m going to be first in line.
Kate Nagy is Editor at Large of Geek Speak Magazine.
