Sullivan’s Island, Dorothea Benton Frank. As the book club continues to explore the wide genre of “southern writers,” we take up the first of 20 best-selling novels by Dorothea Benton Frank. “Sullivan’s Island” is about Susan, a middle-aged woman in Charleston whose visits to her childhood home on the island help her regain her  self-esteem after divorcing her cheating husband and dealing with the upheavals of her past, including her abusive father. Ms. Frank’s novels, which usually feature strong, complex women and families in conflict, evoke her upbringing on Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, in the South Carolina Lowcountry.