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Utina, Florida, is a little, down-at-heels southern town. Once enlivened by the trade in Palm Sunday palms and moonshine, Utina hasn't seen economical growth in decades, and no family is more emblematic of the local reality than the Bravos. Deserted by the patriarch years ago, the Bravos are held together in identical strategy by love, unspoken blame, and tenuously brokered truces. The storyline opens on a sweltering July day, as Frank Bravo, dutiful middle son, is awakened by a problems call. Frank dreams of escaping to cool pile waterways, but he's only managed to get 10 minutes from the family restaurant he handles every day and the decrepit, Spanish-moss-draped house he grew up in, and where his strong-willed mother and spitfire sister - both towering redheads, equally matched up in stubbornness - are preventing another battle royale. Little do some of them know that Utina is about to meet the tide of development that has already engulfed the others of Northeast Florida. When opportunity knocks, tempers ignite, secrets are unearthed, and each of the Bravos is compelled to confront the tragedies of the shared past. Reminiscent of Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith, Anne Tyler, and Fannie Flagg, Center of Palm presents Laura Lee Smith as a captivating new tone of voice in American fiction.
