LITTLE TEA by Claire Fullerton – Southern Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Cultural Heritage Fiction

Author Claire Fullerton’s skillfully crafted fourth novel, Little Tea, weaves bits and pieces of the human condition into a timely story.  

Prepare to visit Fullerton’s Deep South, where, like the tropical storms from the Gulf, the southern mystique engulfs the land and its people. Beneath the genteel manners and tradition are whirlpools of passion, unrelenting memories, and behaviors that ebb and flow to and from the edges of conscious thought, leaving behind a sense of anxious anticipation.  

From when Celia Wakefield agrees to meet her high-school friends, Renny Thornton and Ava Cameron, to spend a long weekend at Renny’s lake cabin in Arkansas, she’s been uneasy. She hasn’t gone “home” for more than ten years—it’s too painful. She first met Renny and Ava before her life inexorably changed. They were thirteen years old – newly-minted adolescents eager to spread their wings and take on the world. Besties ever since, Renny and Ava are a part of Celia’s present and unthinkable history. Celia needs their friendship, but the past floats just below the surface, like a ‘gator waiting for prey.

But now she must go.  

Ava, the fey sprite, the dream spinner, needs her help. She’s having a mid-life crisis and has reached out to her and Renny for support. 

Celia agrees to fly to Memphis, meet Ava at the terminal, travel to Renny’s ranch in Olive Branch, Mississippi. From there, they will proceed to Renny’s lake house over the border in Arkansas for a long weekend of intervention and renewal. It’s all about Ava’s issues—not hers. It’s what good friends do. 

That weekend, while Ava grapples with her discontent, alcoholism, and re-connects with her first love, Celia finds herself revisiting her own agonies. Her painful past, sublimated for so long, surfaces and demands resolution.   

Little Tea resonates on many levels. 

This modern-day drama juxtaposes the traumas of contemporary issues with unresolved traumas from history, where, for so many, the safe, secure, and predictable world of childhood innocence was ripped away, replaced by the unthinkable.

For the reader who not only enjoys an engaging story but values skilled writing, Little Tea fits the bill. Fullerton’s use of lyrical language, imagery, and authentic dialogue capture the feel of the south. Her characters are believable—everyone knows an “Ava.” Fullerton uses setting as a nuanced character, always nearby, influencing without being intrusive and, her pacing and word choices are exemplary.        

Like many modern, provocative novels, Little Tea ends not by tidying up anything. Fullerton leaves her readers with an open door, so to speak, that allows readers to venture out onto the porch, sit down on the old wicker rocker, and ponder what the characters might do next. In this trusting the reader, Fullerton gifts us with latitude for interpretation.      

If you’ve never spent time in the south or wish to revisit, Little Tea will take you there. All in all, Fullerton has given readers a story that engages both the mind and the heart. Little Tea won First in Category in the 2019 Somerset Awards for literary fiction.