The Waiting Time

St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1998. Very Good. Price's thirty-ninth (and final--she died recently) book is set, like many of its predecessors, in Georgia's coastal lowlands. This time out, readers will meet transplanted Bostonian Abby Allyn, newly widowed at 31. Although she has lived in the town of Darien for five years, Abby apparently has nev er before considered what she lives on. It's not until the death of her old er husband, whose closed mouth and deep pockets irritated Abby (never mind that some would consider these to be fine traits in a spouse!), that the re ality of owning a rice plantation and 100 human beings hits home. A visit t o her mother undams a torrent of ladylike abolitionist sentiment, and Abby returns to Darien determined to free her slaves. The heel-cooling period of the title refers both to Abby's need to work out the timing and legalities involved in freeing her slaves as war looms on the horizon, and to the off icial year of mourning that must pass before she can decently marry her sec ret beau, the plantation's handsome and voluble overseer. The book is unden iably corny, much of the dialogue reminds one of 10-year-old girls playing dress-up, but not without an innocent charm.