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When Arlene Fleet heads up north for college,
she makes three promises to God: She will stop fornicating
with every boy who crosses her path; never tell another lie;
and never, ever go back to the "fourth rack of hell," her
hometown of Possett, Alabama. All she wants from Him is one
little miracle: make sure the body is never found.
Ten years later, God has broken His end
of the deal. Alabama has landed on Arlene's Chicago doorstep
in the form of her high school archenemy, a young woman who
wants to find the golden-haired football hero who disappeared
during their senior year.
To make matters worse, Arlene's African
American boyfriend, Burr, has given her an ultimatum-introduce
him to her lily-white family or he's gone. Arlene would rather
burn up in a fire than let him meet her steel magnolia Aunt
Florence; her eccentric, half-mad Mama; her sweet-as-pecan-pie
Cousin Clarice; and all the rest of her deeply racist kith
and kin.
But the fickle finger of fate is pointing
her south. All too soon she and Burr are on their way to confront
Arlene's redneck roots, the secret she ran from, and the crime
that stole her peace of mind. Back in the small town of her
girlhood, Arlene's demons are closing in-and after a decade
of running away, Arlene must face them all. Yet while the
truth threatens to destroy the life she has built for herself,
it just may open her eyes to a love powerful enough to revise
her past and alter her future.
Crackling with humor, defiantly endearing
characters, and plot twists that will astonish even the most
jaded reader, Gods in Alabama will send you careening
from tears to laughter and back. Most of all, it brings a
unique, rough-around-the-edges heroine to life and makes her
a permanent part of your own.
JOSHILYN JACKSON is a native of
the Deep South, a former actor and award-winning teacher,
and now a full-time writer and mother of two. Her work has
previously appeared in TriQuarterly and Calyx,
as well as the anthology ChickLit II. She is currently
at work on her second novel. She lives with her family outside
of Atlanta, Georgia. You can visit her web site at joshilynjackson.com.
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