Patterns on the Sand

Patterns on the Sand is Gamel Woolsey's 'long-lost' second novel. Written in England during the 1940s, it is a tale of youthful love set in Charleston and the South Carolina Low Country of Woolsey's youth. It centres on the vague yearnings and sexual awakening of her main protagonist Sara, an outsider in the privileged Old South world of her friend Elizabeth Gordon and her brothers Rush and William. But Woolsey also skillfully weaves a murder mystery and an unexpected denouement into this beautifully evocative story. 'Woolsey's narrative voice is laconic in its description of the young women's vapid lives and in its suggestion of stereotypical southern languor, while the imagery, drawn from nature, gives the text a rich, sensual colourfulness.' So writes Professor Barbara Ozieblo, who unearthed the work from the archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at Austin, Texas, in her informative introduction to the published volume. 'It is also a novel which shows how difficult it is to escape from the constrictions imposed by society and how the past, although it has to be acknowledged, must also be surpassed.