Rating: *****
Tags: Teenage girls, Families, Contemporary Women, Families - Mental Health, Humorous, Mental Health, Family Life, General, Literary, Women - Georgia, Savannah (Ga.), Humorous fiction, Eccentrics and Eccentricities, Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Women, Lang:en
Summary
Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel
sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom
Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she
has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the
tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire
town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the
1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck
and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue
comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In
her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to
Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern
eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women.
From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her
backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons,
to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene
Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her
canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee
entertained and enthralled for an entire summer. Laugh-out-loud
funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is,
as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong
women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a
novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female
friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one
mother and finds many others.