Saving CeeCee Honeycutt - Beth Hoffman

Synopsis from book flap: Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

Book club book for May, and I really enjoyed it.

I appreciated the tasteful handling of Camille’s mental disorder. I like watching CeeCee grow and change as a character, in some ways reclaiming a childhood she had missed and in other ways becoming a more mature and adult-like. I loved the different, kooky characters that CeeCee meets in the south. Most of all, I enjoyed the warm, “accept you as you are” feeling of the whole novel.

Probably my favorite takeaway from the book is something Camille has said that CeeCee remembers towards the end of the narrative:

             “It’s how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us our beauty.”

That statement is so true. And something important for me to remember right now in life. With God and support, I can push through the painful bits of life and come out the other side a stronger, more beautiful person inside.