Southern Hospitality

Southern Hospitality is a 1990 romance novel by Sarah Hawkes, under the penname Sally Falcon, published by Meteor Publishing Corporation as part of its short-lived Kismet line of romance novels.  

The novel centers upon Logan Winchester Herrington VI, heir apparent of the Herrington Publishing Group of Boston, Massachusetts, currently headed up by his uncle, Preston. Finding his nephew too cold-hearted, Preston tells the young man that he fears he will become “a frozen, humorless replica of your mother with no hope of redemption” and that he has drawn up plans to have Logan disinherited unless he changes course. The ostensible cure to Logan’s being “an effete snob” is three months in Arkansas to do human interest reporting for Rally Driver magazine, with Tyrone Lucius (T. L.) Planchet looking after him.  

Logan is picked up at the Little Rock (Pulaski County) airport by Victoria Camille (Tory) Planchet, T. L.’s daughter; she is a Cordon Bleu chef and owner of Bill of Fare Catering, soon to be Bill of Fare Shoppes in Park Plaza Mall. Logan stays at the house of T. L. and his wife, Arnette; Tory has a cottage nearby on the family property. Later, T. L. tells Tory that Preston is dying and assigns his daughter the task of helping Logan to feel comfortable in Arkansas.  

Both Logan and Tory find themselves simultaneously attracted to—and repulsed by—the other. The second time Logan comes on to her strong, she says, “I refuse to become involved with another man like you,” referring to her former fiancé, Reed Calahan.  

Logan and Tory drive to Oklahoma for the Cherokee Challenge off-road rally. They arrange to bunk separately, with Tory in the Winnebago and Logan with a roommate, but his roommate, Harve, has female company, and Logan tries to sneak into the Winnebago to sleep in a front chair. Tory surprises him and accuses him of trying to have his way with her. Their passions then get the better of them, and they have sex. After avoiding the subject following the rally and then on the way back to Arkansas, they stop for a meal, and Tory agrees to talk about what happened if Logan will tell her why he is in Arkansas.  

Tory offers to help him learn to be a little more “human,” but his northern elitism gets in the way: “After all, his family was eating off crystal and china while her ancestors were probably still scouring the woods for beavers and racoons as fashionable attire.” Logan does help out with a party Tory is catering on the Spirit, an Arkansas River steamboat, and covers the Arkansas Traveler rally for the magazine. During the rally, Logan awkwardly confesses to Tory’s brothers that he loves her, and they encourage him to try to behave in a more southern fashion. He succeeds in wooing her, and they have sex again before he goes to spend a week in Texas covering another rally. Before he returns, his mother, Enid, arrives at the Planchet place to see how Logan is getting along. After first experiencing Enid’s snobbery toward her surroundings, and then seeing it dissolve, Tory realizes that she has been holding onto some regional snobbery of her own, judging Logan harshly for his Yankee ways.  

At the end of the book, Logan proposes to Tory. In their postcoital conversation following her acceptance of the proposal, Tory proposes that they divide their future years by six months in Boston and six in Little Rock, recalling the Roman myth of Proserpina (Persephone in the Greek), who was required to spend half the year in the underworld.  

For additional information:
Falcon, Sally. Southern Hospitality. Bensalem, PA: Meteor Publishing Corporation, 1990. 

Sally Falcon. https://www.sallyfalcon-saraheagle.net/index.htm (accessed March 22, 2024). 

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas