South Georgia town eagerly awaits hometown writer's first novel

ATLANTA - Frances Mayes, the Georgia author who became well-known writing about life in Italy, is promoting her first novel -- a family tale set in small south Georgia town that strikingly resembles Mayes hometown of Fitzgerald. <br> <br> ``Swan&#39;&#39; is a sometimes bizarre character story set in the 1970s about an adult brother and sister, J.J. and Ginger Mason, coping with their enigmatic mother&#39;s death, ruled a suicide by shotgun two decades earlier. <br> <br> Mayes, who wrote ``Bella Tuscany&#39;&#39; and ``Under the Tuscan Sun,&#39;&#39; insists the book doesn&#39;t recount anything that really happened in Fitzgerald, which the author left after graduating from high school in 1958. <br> <br> But some of the town&#39;s more than 7,000 residents expect to find themselves, or people and places they know, portrayed in the copies they are snapping up. <br> <br> The editor of the Fitzgerald Herald-Leader, Tim Anderson, said ``Particularly the older people are talking about it. They can&#39;t wait to get their hands on it. They think there&#39;s some dirt in it.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Barbara Jacobs, the owner of the town&#39;s only bookstore, said she expects the title to be as popular as ``Left Behind,&#39;&#39; the Christian book series. She has a couple dozen books on pre-order. <br> <br> There are many obvious connections between Fitzgerald and fictional Swan. <br> <br> Located about 200 miles south of downtown Atlanta and about 20 miles east of the ``World&#39;s Largest Peanut,&#39;&#39; a tall, goober-shaped monument that rises above Interstate 75 in Ashburn, Fitzgerald was incorporated about 100 years ago by Union veterans. The turpentine camp of a few houses and stores that preceded Fitzgerald was called Swan. <br> <br> Mayes said the novel is an homage to, but not portrayal of, her childhood home, and that the writing of it stirred up a lot of family memories, including some that were unwelcome.