Coffee with Cassandra King: 'Failed Southern Belle'

You're going to love this. Cassandra King, known to many as Sandra Conroy, wife of novelist Pat Conroy, will be at Park Road Books at 12:30 p.m. Friday for a "Coffee with Cassandra," that is, of course, free and open to the public.

Cassandra King

She'll be talking about her latest book, "The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life: Advice from a Failed Southern Belle" (Maiden Lane Press, $15), which grew out of a commencement speech she gave last year at her alma mater, the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Ala.

I've met Cassandra, and I can certify that she's not a failed anything. But neither is she prissy or insincere or sweety-sweet as are some of our very finest belles. (Now that was truly insincere.)
The advice she gives here will make you smile -- especially if you went to college in the South in the fifties or sixties -- but it's advice you'll want to pass onto your daughters and granddaughters.

The title of the book is tongue-in-cheek, and if you're at Park Road Books on Friday, you must ask Cassandra its origin.

Six pieces of advice are all she gives. One of the wisest is No. Three: "Life Is Going to Break Your Heart."

"If you cannot accept that," she writes, "life will not only break your heart, it will break you as well."
This is the perfect graduation gift.

P.S. You can leave your white gloves at the door.