Cally Lily Ponder's mother, M'dear, runs the Crowning Glory Beauty Porch- a glassed in section of their front porch, and the family dance lesson business the Swing-n-Sway. They live in La Luna, Louisiana a tiny town filled with love and the excellent characters that grow in the south. Southern fiction has the bestest characters! Well, okay, Evanovich's Trenton New Jersians from the One for the Money series are pretty bestest too.
Having tweaked my lumbar spine a bit, I'm spending more time reading right now, and this one went down in the afternoon with about 3 tall glasses of lemon water. I needed extra water due to tear-induced dehydration, but I wasn't much for refilling my own glass, so snagged a kid periodically to do so instead. That's right. I cried. Now this isn't always a ringing endorsement for me when deciding what book to read, or what film to see. For instance, Angela's Ashes made me cry. So does The Diary of Anne Frank. But these also leave me feeling hollow, and a bit depressed. Not so with Calla Lily. I cried, yes, but I didn't feel bad. And that, is an art. Calla Lily falls in love, gets her heart broken, moves to the big city: N.O. falls in love again, gets her heart broken, moves back to La Luna and finds love again. Happy Ending. Yeah! Too bad a few key folks had to die along the way- thus the tears. Rebecca Wells' Ya Ya Sisterhood was one of my favorite books in the 1990's. I entertained the career option of buying a large convertible and becoming an alcoholic but didn't see how it would pan out. On the other hand, I was not a fan of Little Alters Everywhere. So, I was unsure if I was ready to dip again into the booze infused prose of Wells. I was ready. On the other hand, the one without the scotch, neat, I'm not ready to hand this one to the kiddies. When they're 30. Or 40 and they've tweaked their back thus prostrate.
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