by Rivers Siddons Anne

Anne Rivers Siddons 'cannot be surpassed in evoking a kind of life peculiar to the South,' says Publishers Weekly. Her classic novel Heartbreak Hotel, praised as 'anything but nostalgic' by The New York Times, excels with an insightful, troubling tale of the coming of age of a privileged young Southern woman during the turbulent Civil Rights era.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King has organized a bus boycott. In Tuscaloosa, outrage surrounds the entrance of the state university's first black student. But at little Randolph University, sweltering in the summer heat, life remains dreamily the same. At Kappa House, the sorority sisters talk of who has pinned whom, and whether they can sneak past their housemother so they can party at an out-of-town bar. Even among this privileged group, pretty, popular Kappa sister Maggie Deloach is unquestionably one of the elite...until she commits a single act of defiance and courage that forever alters the way others think of her, and how Maggie thinks of herself.