Southern Belle Magazine Digital #02 August 2013 | Page 34

is filled with amazing opportunities T he world that more apparent than the South.and no place is To-

day, I begin my new gig as a columnist. I accepted the job not long after I’d walked inside from riding my sassy little Quarterhorse mare, Piper. Sitting at my desk in paddock books, jeans, a T-shirt, and Ground Zero Blues Club ‘tractor hat’, the irony of my position as columnist for Southern Belle wasn’t lost on me. My attire is a far cry from the crinoline and hoop skirts of the traditional Southern belle, but that’s an old vision of simpering girls groomed for marriage. The dress code and societal roles that once defined a “belle” no longer do. In modern lingo, the term belle applies to a person who knows her heritage, her dreams, and most importantly, herself. I write a series of books, the Sarah Booth Delaney Mississippi Delta Mystery series, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. The 13th and latest book in the series is Smarty Bones. Via the books’ characters, I’ll comment on the multi-faceted role of the Southern woman today - and it’s vastly different from the stereotyped view of Scarlett O’Hara manipulating men (though a talent for showing a man how much he wants to please you is not a bad thing, as my character Tinkie will tell you). Sarah Booth is a woman in her mid-thirties who has come home from a failed career as a Broadway actress to save her family plantation, Dahlia House, in the fictional town of Zinnia, Mississippi. Not your traditional Southern belle, Sarah Booth becomes a private investigator - her real talent is nosiness. More of a tomboy and animal lover, Sarah Booth partners up with Tinkie, a woman she once viewed as insipid. In the first book, Them Bones, Tinkie hires Sarah Booth to look into the background of handsome, and elusive, Hamilton Garrett V. Did he murder his mother? Tinkie wants to know because she’s developed a crush on the brooding plantation owner. As the books progress, Sarah Booth displays a true belle trait. She grows and changes. Tinkie is a daddy’s girl, and Sarah Booth comes to realize that gentle manipulation is the flip side of “take by force.” Tinkie’s talents, combined with Sarah Booth’s own, lead to a successful P.I. agency. The two women are assisted in their mystery solving by Zinnia Dispatch society editor, Cece Dee Falcon. Born Cecil, Cece underwent gender reassignment to match her body to her sensibilities. Cece knows the courage it takes to live a life of integrity, one that honors who she is, not the package she was born in. She’s a fearless friend, smart, and a snappy dresser. Millie Roberts runs Millie’s Café, where all elements of society meet for good food and gossip. 34