From Publishers Weekly
In this amiable expos‚ of a genteel enclave of the Deep South, where marriages disintegrate into strained truces, 38-year-old Jessie Maddox finds herself imagining all the ways her faultlessly upright but mind-numbingly boring banker husband, Turner, might plausibly die. A fall in the shower? A freak explosion in the basement? Anything would do. In lieu of murderous action, Jessie seeks the same false sense of well-being she prescribes to her psychiatric patients at the Glenville Wellness Center, like Wanda McNabb, a homemaker who actually has killed her husband. Then Jessie's best friend in Glenville Meadows, a suburban subdivision full of "Southern Living wives," confesses that she is involved in a steamy affair, and Jessie finds herself desperate for any change at all. In an effort to recapture her youth, she journeys to her hometown in Randolph Gap, Ala., where her mother a maker of macram‚ handbags and a fervent evangelical churchgoer still keeps house for her long-suffering father, and her wild sister, Ellen, is visiting with her son, Justin, and a full menagerie of birds. By contrast, dull Turner starts looking better. Finally, the gritty realities of smalltown limitations and universal disappointments steer the story away from a Thelma and Louise finale toward a more realistic but no less dramatic and ironic ending. Braselton's depiction of the plight of restless women and her brilliant descriptions of sheltered suburbia and smalltown life are delivered with scathing wit. (Oct. 2)Forecast: Blurbs from Anne Rivers Siddons, Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith and Terry Kay suggest the slant and appeal of this novel, and should do much to capture readers' attention. An eight-city author tour and national print advertising will help.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This debut novel by a Georgia writer comes with much-deserved praise from authors such as Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Lee Smith. After 11 years of marriage and four miscarriages, Jessie Maddox is puzzled by thoughts and dreams of her husband Turner's death. Why would she want her kind (if somewhat boring) husband dead? Through women she knows, the book explores the ways wives seek happiness, from adultery to violence. Trying to understand her staid life as Turner's wife and a member of the local Episcopal church, Jessie visits her rural Alabama home. There she begins to reconcile the past and the present with the help of the Holy Rock church, her fundamentalist mother, and her hell-raising sister. Braselton's characters and situations evoke sympathetic laughter and provide ample insight into the human condition. This is regional fiction at its best.
- Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
