num_pages: 400
description: WINNER OF THE GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR FIRST NOVEL“Braselton’s confident first novel is [a] depiction of love on the rocks in the New South that combines small town charm with major league angst. . . . A down-home Proustian recherché search . . . [An] entertaining, rueful account of an apparently ‘normal’ marriage.”–Los Angeles Times“Simply extraordinary. [This novel] has the wit and modern comedy of Nora Ephron and the literary force of Flannery O’Connor.”–KAYE GIBBONSAuthor of Ellen FosterAt thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with the most responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now Jessie is left to Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow? As Jessie dives headlong into her midlife crisis, she is joined by a colorful cast of eccentrics. There’s her best friend Donna, who is having a wild adulterous affair with a younger man; Wanda McNabb, the sweet-natured grandmother who is charged with killing her husband; Jessie’s younger sister Ellen, who was born to be a guest on Jerry Springer ; their mother, who persistently crosses the dirty words out of library books; and of course the stuffed green headless duck. . . .When a trip home to the small town of her childhood raises more questions than it answers, Jessie is forced to face the startling truth head-on–and confront the tragedy that has shadowed her heart and shaken her faith in love . . . and the future.
language: English
title: A False Sense of Well Being
titlecomplete: A False Sense of Well Being (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
genres: Novels, Southern, Fiction, Chick Lit, Contemporary
ratings_count: 733
publisher: Ballantine Books