Title: Mavis
Description: Mavis Schmidt Holmstead has smoothed every wrinkle, threaded every needle, and cooled every fever in a family of six sisters who grew up on a North Dakota farm. More than their patient, hardworking mother or their hard-drinking, unpredictable father, it was Mavis, the eldest, who was always the parent. Mavis checked their homework, set their hair for dates, and glowed with pride as their babies were born or their books were published.

Her determination propelled her sisters into adulthood, though she could not have imagined how divergent their lives would turn out to be.

Today Maxine, the second oldest, is a scholar living in Chicago. Judy, vain and restless, goes from one marriage to the next seeking adulation and luxury. Isabelle has found love but has never introduced the woman who has been her longtime lover to her family. Only Janice and Irene remained in their hometown near Mavis. But Janice's life is drudgery and Irene is dead, killed in the fiery crash of a car driven by her husband, Jack Carlson.

Now Jack, too, is dead, and the confessed murderer is sixty-year-old Mavis - widow, mother, grandmother, matriarch.

Mavis's gravitational pull is still strong and the sisters gather together, not only to support her but to discover the truth. No one believes Mavis capable of murder. She must be lying, but why? As old rivalries and outgrown roles rend the fragile fabric of family that Mavis has worked so hard to preserve, each sister must redefine her position and responsibilities.

Buried secrets and dangerous emotions are exposed, revealing truths that go well beyond a murder confession, truths simultaneously harrowing and redemptive.
Subjects: Fiction, Murder, Women, North dakota, fiction, Fiction, general, Families, Domestic fiction
Places: North Dakota