Cathy Holton

Cathy Holton was a Southern novelist attentive to sharp social observation, long friendships, and the versions of themselves people present to one another. Beach Trip reunites Mel, Sara, Annie, and Lola more than two decades after their college years. A week at Lola's North Carolina beach house gives the four women time away from ordinary routines, but it also brings old loyalties, omissions, and changed expectations into the same rooms. Ballantine Books issued Beach Trip during 2009, with a 2010 paperback edition running 432 pages. Holton also wrote Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes and The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes, books similarly attentive to friendship, status, and Southern settings. The reunion balances humor with serious revelation by allowing the women's shared past to look different from each perspective. The coastal setting offers temporary distance, not escape, and becomes a measure of which bonds have endured and which memories need reconsideration.