Search - On Agate Hill

I really enjoyed this book. It starts as a coming-of-age story of a spitfire orphan girl of good Southern family after the Civil War and follows her through her life, which takes her into the mountains of North Carolina as a teacher and musician's wife. Full of wonderful quirky characters in a society in shambles, with an good plot that unfolds through a diary and letters. It's about relationships, not history, but the effects of the Civil War on the South are part of the atmosphere. A very readable novel with a protagonist-narrator, Molly Petree, who is a very memorable woman.

Melodrama, humor, romance, mystery and a dash of history are the seemingly contradictory pieces that combine to make On Agate Hill an enjoyable book.

Molly, the main character, is part Anne of Green Gables, part Scarlett O'Hara, and her story, from the Civil War to the 1920's, is told in an interesting mixture of introspective diary entries and more objective 3rd person narrative. She is not always a sympathetic character, but her life and times are never dull.