"A major new voice in southern fiction."—Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author From the New York Times bestselling author of Under the Southern Sky and The Wedding Veil  comes a moving debut novel about two mothers—one biological and one adoptive. One baby girl. Two strong Southern women. And the most difficult decision they’ll ever make. Frances “Khaki” Mason has it all: a thriving interior design career, a loving husband and son, homes in North Carolina and Manhattan—everything except the second child she has always wanted. Jodi, her husband’s nineteen-year-old cousin, is fresh out of rehab, pregnant, and alone. Although the two women couldn’t seem more different, they forge a lifelong connection as Khaki reaches out to Jodi, encouraging her to have her baby. But as Jodi struggles to be the mother she knows her daughter deserves, she will ask Khaki the ultimate favor... Written to baby Carolina, by both her birth mother and her adoptive one, this is a story that proves that life circumstances shape us but don’t define us—and that families aren’t born, they’re made... “ Dear Carolina is Southern fiction at its best....Beautifully written.”— New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge  *PopSugar’s Best Books for Women* *Huffington Post’s Summer Reading: Women’s Fiction Style* *Glitter Guide’s Must-Read List for June* *Deep South Magazine’s Best Beach Reads* *The Herald Sun’s Summer Reads* Praise for Dear Carolina : “Characters with rich, complicated lives…beautifully shows how a family comes to be.”— New York Time s bestselling author Jodi Thomas “A beautifully written and overwhelmingly heart driven book that makes me proud to call myself a North Carolinian! The south is known for breeding brilliant storytellers and Kristy Woodson Harvey has proven herself to be one of the south’s most heartfelt female driven authors of our generation.”—Jaime Pressly, star of CBS’s Mom “Ingenious.”—Romantic Times “Southern fiction at its best. Lovely and lyrical, with the strong voices of the two female narrators taking us deep into the heart of what being a mother is about. It shows us that love is not without sacrifice, and there’s little in life that doesn’t go down easier with a spoonful of jam. Beautifully written.”— New York Times  bestselling author Eileen Goudge “Kristy Harvey is a natural.”—Ann Garvin, Author of On Maggie’s Watch and The Dog Year “Southern to the bone and full of engaging characters...a strikingly beautiful story of love and sacrifice.”—Kim Boykin, author of Palmetto Moon   “A stunning southern and compelling debut of love and sacrifice. The next Dorothea Benton Frank meets Emily Giffin!”—JDC Must Read Books “A beautiful depiction of two very different lives paralleled only through motherhood,  Dear Carolina  comes to a powerful conclusion: ‘You can never have too many people who love you.’”—Deep South Magazine “Just plain good fiction.”—Greensboro News & Record “Will tug at your heart-strings in so many ways.”—Traveling with T “By far one of the best women’s fiction books I’ve ever read.”—The Turning Pages Kristy Woodson Harvey is the author of The Southern Side of Paradise , The Secret to Southern Charm , Slightly South of Simple , Lies and Other Acts of Love , Dear Carolina and The Wedding Veil . She is a born-and-bred North Carolina girl who loves all four seasons—especially fall in Chapel Hill, where she attended college, and summer in Beaufort, where she and her family spend every free moment.   Khaki SALAD GREENS I designed a special scrapbook for each of my children. A custom-made blue or pink album with white polka dots and a fat bow tied down the side, the front center proudly displaying a monogram that was given to each of you. I take those books out every now and then. Sometimes I add a new photo or memento. Other times I gaze at the pictures and marvel at how quickly the eyes-closed-to-the-world phase of infancy morphs into the headfirst-plunging alacrity of toddlerhood. Other times, like tonight, with your book in particular, my sweet Carolina, I sit on the floor of our family room overlooking my favorite field of corn and simply stare at the cover, running my finger across the scrolling monogram. It’s only a name , we have been reminded since middle school in what has now become perhaps the most cliché of Shakespeare’s musings. But, in what is certainly not the first exception to a Shakespearean rule, that name means more than the house your daddy built in this field where we spent so much time falling in love or the sterling silver service that has been in our family for generations. It means more because that name wasn’t always yours. And you weren’t always ours. I was, just like a mother should be, the first person to hold you when you were born. Your birth mother, after thirty hours of labor, fainted when she saw you, perfect and round and red as a fresh-picked apple. I felt like holding yo