The book of Polly
Subtitle: a novel
By: Kathy Hepinstall
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books; PAMELA DORMAN
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780399562099
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Fiction; Mothers and daughters; Dysfunctional families; Family secrets
Description: "The laugh-out-loud story of a girl determined to keep up with her aging, crazy-as-a-fox mother and learn the truth of her mother's long-secret past ... Willow Havens is ten years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to shoot varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors--and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young, modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late fifties when Willow was born, so Willow knows she's here by accident, a late-life afterthought. Willow's father died before she was born, her much older brother and sister are long grown and gone and failing elsewhere: it's just her and bigger-than-life Polly. Willow is desperately hungry for clues to the family life that preceded her, and especially Polly's life pre-Willow. Why did she leave her hometown of Bethel, Louisiana, fifty years ago and vow never to return? Who is Garland Jones, her long-ago suitor who possibly killed a man? And will Polly be able to outrun The Bear, the illness that finally puts her on a collision course with her past?"--