Lucy Conyers lives with her brothers, mother, and stepfather in Tallahassee, in the last house in the white part of town, just before the pavement ends and the road turns to dirt. On the other side of a patch of woods are Melvina Williams, the Conyers' maid, her drunken husband Old Alfonso, and a yard full of kids, mostly boys -- including Lucy's obsession, the wild and handsome Skippy.
From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in "Bastard Out of Carolina," Kaye Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees, and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Truely Noonan is the quintessential Southern boy made good. Like his older sister, Courtney, Truely left behind the slow, sweet life of Mississippi for jet-set San Francisco, where he earned a fortune as an Internet entrepreneur. Courtney and Truely each find happy marriages -- until, as if cursed by success, those marriages start to crumble. Then their lives are interrupted by an unexpected stranger: a troubled teenager named Arnold, garrulous, charming, thuggishly dressed, and determined to move in to their world. Arnold turns their lives upside down, and in the process this unlikely trio becomes the family that each had been searching for. In the best Southern fiction tradition, Kincaid has brought us an inspiring story about finding the way home.
Set in contemporary small town America, this is the story of Verbena Martin Eckert McHale ("Bena," for short), an indomitable woman who is damned—but not doomed—by the bad behavior and bad luck of her two husbands. When Bena's first husband, Bobby Eckert, dies in a car wreck, she's left with their five children, a little mortgaged house, a little bit of insurance, and a big empty place in her heart. Not to mention that the hole Bobby left is jagged around the edges—he wasn't in the car alone and Bena hadn't had a clue about his girlfriend. So now she's a cheated-on widow with five grief-stricken children to finish raising. No matter. No matter that she almost burns the house down when she discovers the marijuana farm in their backyard or that she has terrible, loud crying jags in church. When it gets down to it, Bena's backbone bends minimally and her moral center holds. By the time she's ready to invest again in romance, Bena know what she wants. When she finds the right man and the right circumstances, she doesn't hesitate—she marries Lucky McHale. And what does he do? He disappears off the face of the earth. Verbena is the vibrant story of an extraordinary ordinary woman—strong, emotional, headstrong, sexy, funny—an especially American woman, one worth knowing and cheering.
Having left their rural Southern homes for lucrative opportunities, siblings Truely and Courtney Noonan find their happiness unraveling with the failures of their marriages, until a thuggish but ambitious teen turns their lives upside down.
The story of a college football coach--his rise and his fall--is narrated by his wife and the many other women who have played a key role in his life and reveals what the sport of football is really all about. Tour.
From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in "Bastard Out of Carolina," Kaye Gibbon's "Ellen Foster," Lily Owens in "The Secret Life of Bees," and Scout from "To Kill a Mockingbird.
From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in "Bastard Out of Carolina," Kaye Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees, and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
BALLS is the story of a college football coach, his rise, his fall, and his fallback position. You could say BALLS is the story of a coach's kick-off, his first, second, and third downs . . . and his punt. But BALLS is a coach's story that belongs to the coach's wife. To her, and to his mother, his mother-in-law, his daughter, his assistants' wives, his players' mothers and girlfriends, and even his players' grandmothers. It's the women standing behind this handsome football hero who tell the story behind the headlines of Mac Gibbs, Birmingham University coach Catfish Bomar's star quarterback, who married Dixie Carraway, the beautiful homecoming queen. Set in Alabama, home state of the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, BALLS is told by fifteen women and one little girl touched by Mac Gibbs's fall from fame as a college quarterback to infamy as head coach of the Birmingham University Black Bears. It's told in those women's voices, from their seats in the stands. They watch the other women, worry when players are slow to get up off the ground, pray when players are carried off on stretchers. They don't care much for the "science" of the game--or its brutality. They see football as it really is--sexy, dirty, sweaty, painful, empowering, corrupt. The story they tell is often funny and not always pretty, as the view from deep inside rarely is. This is a novel that moves with the force of a fourth down charge, and shimmers with the tears of the women waiting outside the locker-room door when the game is lost. The author, twice a head coach's wife, knows whereof she writes so brilliantly. She also knows a lot about love. And BALLS is, above all, a love story.
Set in contemporary small town America, this is the story of Verbena Martin Eckert McHale ("Bena," for short), an indomitable woman who is damned—but not doomed—by the bad behavior and bad luck of her two husbands. When Bena's first husband, Bobby Eckert, dies in a car wreck, she's left with their five children, a little mortgaged house, a little bit of insurance, and a big empty place in her heart. Not to mention that the hole Bobby left is jagged around the edges—he wasn't in the car alone and Bena hadn't had a clue about his girlfriend. So now she's a cheated-on widow with five grief-stricken children to finish raising. No matter. No matter that she almost burns the house down when she discovers the marijuana farm in their backyard or that she has terrible, loud crying jags in church. When it gets down to it, Bena's backbone bends minimally and her moral center holds. By the time she's ready to invest again in romance, Bena know what she wants. When she finds the right man and the right circumstances, she doesn't hesitate—she marries Lucky McHale. And what does he do? He disappears off the face of the earth. Verbena is the vibrant story of an extraordinary ordinary woman—strong, emotional, headstrong, sexy, funny—an especially American woman, one worth knowing and cheering.
Truely Noonan is the quintessential Southern boy made good. Like his older sister, Courtney, Truely left behind the slow, sweet life of Mississippi for jet-set San Francisco, where he earned a fortune as an Internet entrepreneur. Courtney and Truely each find happy marriages -- until, as if cursed by success, those marriages start to crumble. Then their lives are interrupted by an unexpected stranger: a troubled teenager named Arnold, garrulous, charming, thuggishly dressed, and determined to move in to their world. Arnold turns their lives upside down, and in the process this unlikely trio becomes the family that each had been searching for. In the best Southern fiction tradition, Kincaid has brought us an inspiring story about finding the way home.
Women always know more about the facts of life because most of the facts happen to women," writes a mother to her daughter in the title story of this breathtaking collection, which goes on to prove just that. Nanci Kincaid's eight exquisite stories deftly capture the kind of moments a woman never forgets. Watching the mysterious transformation of your mother as she dolls herself up for a night on the town--with a man other than your father. Watching your best friend fall for the bad boy in town. Wondering if the man at work you're secretly in love with means something by the hand he lets linger on your arm. Kissing a man named Gable on a moonlit night when you've just found out you have only a few months left to live. With an irresistible narrative voice that captures both the humor and heartbreak of love, Nanci Kincaid paints a portrait of women's lifelong courtship with men that will make you laugh and cry in recognition.
Lucy Conyers lives with her brothers, mother, and stepfather in Tallahassee, in the last house in the white part of town, just before the pavement ends and the road turns to dirt. On the other side of a patch of woods are Melvina Williams, the Conyers' maid, her drunken husband Old Alfonso, and a yard full of kids, mostly boys -- including Lucy's obsession, the wild and handsome Skippy.
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