Praise for The Ice House:
“Majestically captures the urgency of reconnecting with a loved one when time seems to be quickly slipping away.”— Publishers Weekly
“While this is a beautiful character-driven novel, the settings are also vividly realized, from the run-down neighborhood of Jacksonville that houses the factory to the remote town in the Scottish Highlands.”—Indie Picks Magazine
“Smith weaves their stories expertly, moving from Jacksonville to Scotland and back, from another disaster to a laugh-out-loud moment. Her tenderness toward her characters and subtle understanding of class differences in American society are reminiscent of such novelists as Richard Russo and Jennifer Egan, but this heartbreaking, heartwarming novel is an original.”—Tampa Bay Times
“Laura Lee Smith has given us a thought-provoking multinational tale… The Ice House will challenge your crime solving skills and teach you lots about the Scottish Highlands. The exciting ending has a chilly twist you won’t expect.” —The St. Augustine Record
“The kind of novel that makes you sad when it's over because you know you won't be able to be in that world any longer.” —Advance Reading Copy
“Smith is a devil with the details and her complicated and fascinating portrayal of this family and our city will have you flipping the pages and cheering for more.” —Jacksonville.com
“The characters in this novel are genuine; they feel like a real family. All of the characters are believable and have their own distinctive voice . . . Although the plot is intriguing, it is the humanity of the characters that keeps you reading.” —eMissourian.com
“The Ice House is a tour de force that sweeps readers into a symphony of powerfully drawn characters, all of whom have been wounded in ways that both cripple and embolden them. This novel is an intercontinental family saga and an exploration of blue-collar life, but at its core it’s a very good novel that asks us to consider the lengths we’ll go to in order to save the things that matter most: a company, a loved one, ourselves.” —Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad and A Land More Kind Than Home
“The Ice House offers all the pleasures of the novel—robust characters we worry about and root for, a story that deepens and intrigues, language that charms and surprises, and even some rare and welcome humor. It does all this in a setting unusual to a novel—the world of work, in this case, a family ice making business in Florida. How does Laura Lee Smith keep that small, cold world so large and ardent hearted? The Ice House is a marvel of a novel.” —Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Laureate of Mississippi and author of Heating & Cooling
Praise for Heart of Palm:
“Intelligence, heart, wit . . . Laura Lee Smith has all the tools, and Heart of Palm is a very impressive first novel.”—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
“Incandescent.”— O, the Oprah Magazine
“[A] fine, funny first novel . . . A heaping dose of Southern soul with a whole lot of chutzpah thrown in.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“A knockout . . . It reminded me often of the novels of Richard Russo . . . Smith . . . creates a vivid sense of place . . . A fine, bittersweet taste of the Sunshine State.”—Tampa Bay Times
“I could feel the heat, the glare off the Intracoastal. Like a sandspur, Heart of Palm sticks with you, drawing blood.”—Rita Mae Brown, author of Southern Discomfort and Rubyfruit Jungle
“A spirited Southern family saga . . . Fans of Fannie Flagg will enjoy this novel.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Heart of Palm . . . will leave you crying, laughing, and longing for a bygone era.”—Florida Travel + Life
“A big, engrossing and very Southern look at a family in turmoil, Heart of Palm is made to be read on a veranda during the steamy summer months.”—Arizona Republic
“Smith’s debut novel exudes authenticity . . . She turns a phrase with wit . . . Writ[ten] with agility and empathy.”—Publishers Weekly
“Smith is a brilliant writer, and Heart of Palm brims with lush vitality, loss, and desire.”—Julianna Baggott, author of Pure and The Prince of Fenway Park
2017-08-30
The pileup of crises in the life of a Scottish-born businessman comes with a silver lining: an opportunity to mend old wounds and make things right.It never rains but it pours these days for Johnny MacKinnon, who has been diagnosed with a potentially cancerous brain cyst just as the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has brought a claim of negligence against his creaky old ice-making factory, the Bold City Ice Plant, after a leak of ammonia gas. The fines could sink the business. Then there's his shattered relationship with his 30-year-old son, Corran, whose heroin addiction has survived three stints in rehab. Father and son are no longer speaking after Corran's last visit, when some important valuables went missing. Is Corran clean, now that he's a single parent to baby daughter Lucy? And what about Johnny's two wives? Current partner Pauline is beginning to regret never having children of her own, while his previous wife, Sharon, is struggling with her own husband's incipient dementia alongside Corran's need for child care help. Smith (Hearts of Palm, 2013) kick-starts her second novel, set (like her first) in the environs of Jacksonville, Florida, with this busy agglomeration of dilemmas but then shifts gear, relinquishing the sense of urgency as Johnny—in the company of a comic-foil teenager, Chemal, who will act as driver—returns to Scotland for an uneasy reunion with Sharon and Corran. Although the clock is ticking on Johnny's brain surgery and the OSHA investigation, the novel meanders indulgently on either side of the Atlantic until a near-death experience reorders the landscape. Now, it turns out, there's a solution to every obstacle. Insight, good humor, and generous hearts abound in this readable but baggy saga of starting afresh, which opens with originality but closes with an excess of tidily ticked boxes.
