{"id":59860,"date":"2025-08-11T11:33:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/59860\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T11:33:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:33:19","slug":"victoria-benton-franks-new-novel-the-violet-hour-out-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/59860\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Benton Frank’s new novel ‘The Violet Hour’ out now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria Benton Frank is growing her garden. The camellias and jasmine flowers that she\u2019s planting in the yard of her James Island home were chosen with care \u2014 selected in honor of characters she\u2019s written.<\/p>\n

That cast of characters is expanding, too. Frank names nearly all her protagonists after flowers, and her latest novel is no exception. “The Violet Hour<\/a>” hits shelves on Aug. 12 and follows two women as they navigate grief, reshape their identities and, perhaps, find love.<\/p>\n

True to her Lowcountry roots, Frank\u2019s book tour is peppered with stops in Charleston. In celebration of the novel\u2019s release, Frank will join Blue Bicycle Books at Segra Park for an author luncheon and meet-and-greet on Aug. 22.<\/p>\n

“The Violet Hour” comes just two years after the release of Frank’s debut novel, “My Magnolia Summer,” and offers a closer look into the lives of the Adams family\u2019s youngest daughter, Violet, and her best friend Aly. Much like Frank\u2019s first book, the Lowcountry serves as an active backdrop to the plot \u2014 almost a protagonist in its own right.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharleston just hands me this ham-handed beautiful landscape to work with,\u201d Frank said. \u201c\u2026 It makes you wanna fall in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Frank didn\u2019t begin her career as a writer, she\u2019s always considered herself a storyteller. Daughter of bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank<\/a>, she worked as a chef in New York before returning to Charleston, where she attended college. It was only upon the encouragement of her mother that she began writing her first book, which took seven years to complete.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

“The Violet Hour” is Victoria Benton Frank’s new book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Provided<\/p>\n

Now, six years after her mother\u2019s death, Frank is writing about grief. She considers much of her creative process to be subconscious \u2014 from absorbing Lowcountry living to understanding loss, the themes woven into her work often reflect aspects of her own life. Her husband even makes a cameo as chef at the Post House, where he worked at the time of her writing “The Violet Hour.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Benton Frank is growing her garden. The camellias and jasmine flowers that she\u2019s planting in the yard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[449,64,63,457,134,48733],"class_list":{"0":"post-59860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-books","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-to-edit"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}