Bad Girl Creek
A Novel
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of The Wilder Sisters comes this bittersweet, deeply moving story of four displaced women who unite to run a flower farm, heal their hearts, and real- ize the depth and necessity of friendship.
Phoebe Thomas has lived life as a spectator, confined to a wheelchair, in awe of her beloved Aunt Sadie and overshadowed by her financial wizard brother, James. But when Sadie dies, leaving her a flower farm, the world opens up to Phoebe in ways she could never have imagined. Taking in three roommates to help get the farm running, she finds herself, for the first time in her life, part of a close circle of woman friends. Each displaced from her home, these four women form an invaluable bond as they help one another learn to change their lives.
Set against the gorgeous backdrop of California's central coast, Bad Girl Creek is the inspiring story of how friendship and purpose can transform even the most compromised of women, as well as situations. With her rich, melodic prose and charming wit, Jo-Ann Mapson enchantingly chronicles female strength, family complexities, life crises, the use of humor as a curative power, and love in all its many aspects. Bad Girl Creek is a breathless and pitch-perfect tragicomedy of female friendship in the new American West.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The bestselling author of such hits as Hank & Chloeand Blue Rodeolaunches a trilogy with this sentimental novel of communal life and reinvented family, centering on four women who come together, tending to each other and healing old wounds. Phoebe DeThomas has lived carefully all her life. Thirty-eight years old and in a wheelchair because of a bad heart, she's always felt dwarfed by her flamboyant aunt Sadie and her successful brother James. Now Sadie has died, bequeathing her a flower farm on California's Central Coast. In order to make a go of it, Phoebe takes in three women as boarder/farmhands. Each of the three is "homeless," having recently undergone traumatic life changes: Ness, a black cowgirl with a horse and a secret fear that she has AIDS, has lost her job; Nance, a down-on-her-luck Southern belle, has broken up with her boyfriend; and Beryl, a former kindergarten aide with a prison record, has been evicted from her apartment. All have families that are less than perfect and, living under the same roof, they soon become like blood relatives as they share their secrets and learn to trust again. Mapson combines poignancy with the good-natured banter of girlfriends in her tale of women in transition, waiting to be reborn. Short on conflict but long on comfort and characterization, this is neither the author's best nor her deepest work. Still, there are enough of the quiet charms that fans have come to expect for them to tune into the second installment when it is released.
