After her louse of a boyfriend, who just happens to be partner at the prestigious Manhattan firm where she works, makes a horrible error and pushes the blame onto her shoulders, Natalie Goldberg decides she's had enough.  As the partners, including her boyfriend, proceed to tell her she's being demoted, she shocks them all by saying that she was going to quit to take a job in Macon, Georgia working for the D.A. 

Natalie pulls some strings to ensure she lands the job with the D.A. and heads off to Macon where she learns that the humidity will frazzle her hair and the people don't always take to northerners quickly.  She settles into her new job quickly, but when she is pitted to defend a death-penalty case with the office womanizer, Ben Maddox, Natalie wonders if she has what it takes. 

As she battles Ben, her lawyer father who is not pleased with his daughter's move, and her feelings for Carl, a sexy co-worker who can't seem to get over his jittery ways, Natalie soon learns that she might just be a southerner at heart. 

MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT has a breezy storyline that truly appealed to me.  It's not truly a comedy, yet it has its comical moments, it's not a romance, not quite women's fiction, it is just a poignant look at one woman's life as she tries to please everyone but herself. 

It took me a long time, however, to get used to the author's writing.  First, the story is written in the first person which for me can be hit or miss.  What bothered me was the overly descriptive sentences.  "My corkscrew curls, inching upward and outward, each wiry strand like the fiber of a freshly severed rope, tell me that today will be hot and wet, again."  Move forward a few lines and the author then tells us, "I picked up the white cordless receiver." 

Now, in general I know that authors should be descriptive, but at times I found the details were so much that I got bored reading them.  I really didn't need to know that the phone was white and in today's world most everything is cordless.  I found those details to be annoying for the first few chapters.  Eventually, I became accustomed to the detail and enjoyed Natalie's story.  I do hope we'll see her again.