The award-winning, critically acclaimed author of Why Did I Ever reinvents the Southern Gothic novel here to glorious-and hilarious-effect. . From the author of Why Did I Ever, winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Booksense 76 Pick, a new novel certain to gather as much attention and acclaim. J and Petal. They've known each other for years. They're old friends who married twin brothers, married late into an old New Orleans family. They married money. And married trouble. Now, narrator J, sharp and sarcastic, a stick-thin redhead in her early forties, works the moody Louisiana landscape as a location scout and roams marshes and cane plantations and bayous with names like Cue de Teche and Cocodrie. She's lost her handsome husband.--at least, lost him halfway. Gravely ill, Alt has gone home to his parents and their mansion in New Orleans' Garden District. Twin brother, Saunders, who can be drunkenly brilliant and persuasive at times, is these days all-the-time brilliantly drunk. ("Meet Over & Out," J whispers about the two of them, "Crash & Burn," "Wear & Tear").
Saunders has popped off once too often to his lovely and nerve-wracked wife, Petal, who is ready to kill. Ready with a gun in her hand. For she and Saunders have a child who has seen and heard way too much and has lately, been behaving very badly. So J takes the child home. She takes Petal's gun as well. She will take her own husband back too if only his parents will let her. Meanwhile J's kleptomaniac niece has filched and hidden nine-tenths of J's belongings. Clearly, she can't leave the .45 she took from Petal at home. So, J carries the gun with her everywhere she goes, as she scouts the Cajun towns of Breaux Bridge and Jeanerette, with her freckled intern, Linus, in tow. It is Linus who eventually reveals that J's husband hasn't been too sick to entertain a specific visitor. And in the same moments when J is absorbing that bit of information, she meets someone, a stills photographer, who is hypnotic and utterly desirable. Soon enough, his car will follow hers on her strange last visit to the twins' parents' haunted estate, where Alt will be, and dear angry Petal, and sad, dangerous Saunders.So, it is with Mary Robison's trademark biting humor and breathtaking facility with language, that she sets the stage for a Southern Gothic and unfolds a tale that is so beguiling and appealing, it will delight both her devoted following and new readers alike.