Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Southern housewife Linwood Breedlove Scott was happily content in her comfortable, complacent thirty-year marriage, but when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and runs off with a stripper, her life takes a hilarious, yet touching, right turn into reality. With no place to go but home, she's forced back to her insular hometown and the "eccentric" family she escaped by marrying at nineteen: her senile father, her loving-yet-controlling mother, her long-suffering aunt, her crazy uncle, and her good-for-nothing brother. But despite her newly dependent situation and her family's genteel insanity, Lin begins to stand on her own two feet and wake up to the joys-and perils-of life as a single woman. And she also learns surprising lessons about her family: that things aren't always what they seem, and that the power of love governs even the most dysfunctional of relationships. This joy-filled, moving, and wise-cracking novel delivers a portrait of Southern life, Southern families, and self-discovery that readers will never forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The only degree I have is a Ph.D. in Southern Bitch," proclaims Linwood Breedlove Scott, the feisty Prozac-popping, menopausal heroine of Smith's hardcover debut. When her husband drains their bank account and leaves her for a stripper, Lin retreats to her hometown of Mimosa Branch, Ga., to lick her wounds. Facing her conservative, gossipy Southern town as a newly divorced woman is no easy task, however, especially when her best friend lives miles away, her house has become a menagerie haunted by her Alzheimer's-stricken Uncle Bedford, and her boss at the drugstore is an uptight Northerner, Grant Owens, whom she finds disturbingly attractive. Determined to leave her meek hausfrau self behind and start taking charge of her life, she plots to seduce Grant and joins forces with an ex-con preacher with the proverbial heart of gold to oust the corrupt mayor from office. The story covers familiar territory, but Lin's efforts to make a home for herself in a now-unfamiliar town, to reconnect with her old friends and mend rifts with her family are well-observed and bittersweet. Snapshots of Southern living will charm the hardest-hearted Yankee; the purple bathtub full of pink begonias on Lin's mother's porch is irresistible. The inspirational tone becomes rather cloying as the happy-ever-after ending approaches, but strong characters and Smith's irrepressible wit anchor the fluff. Featured alternate selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Rhapsody and BOMC; regional author tour.
