New York: St Martin's, (2002) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first novel - "Southern housewife Linwood Breedlove Scott was happily content in her comfortable, complacent thirty-year marriage, but when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and runs off with a stripper . . she's forced back to her insular hometown and the "eccentric" family she escaped by marrying at nineteen: her senile father, her loving-yet-controlling mother, her long-suffering aunt, her crazy uncle, and her good-for-nothing brother. But despite her newly dependent situation and her family's genteel insanity, Lin begins to wake up to the joys-and perils-of life as a single woman. And she also learns surprising lessons about her family: that things aren't always what they seem, and that the power of love governs even the most dysfunctional of relationships." 356 pp. ISBN: 0-312300565.