by Linda Bloodworth Thomason

Linda Bloodworth Thomason, famous for her TV writing and as producer of Bill Clinton's A MAN FROM HOPE, turns to fiction in this first novel about six friends from Arkansas, Thomason's home state. Pals from childhood, they are now middle-aged and leading very different lives: a small-town GP, his beleaguered wife, a bakery owner, a quadriplegic poet, a single father, and a rebel who moved away years ago. Thomason's novel reunites these six in a plot that ranges from outrage at the depredations of a huge superstore that's destroying the town, to a lesbian coming out of the closet, to a wedding.