Maggie Sweet - Hardcover

Minthorn Stacy, Judith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060197285 ISBN 13: 9780060197285

Publisher: Harper, 2001

Synopsis

"Last night at supper my husband announced that he had taken our entire life savings and spent it on a family cemetery plot."

Maggie Sweet has had enough. For nearly nineteen years, she's kept house, lived with her husband Steven's frugal weekly menus and dour taste in home decorating, and humored his humorless mother. Now, at thirty-eight, she's nearly finished raising her twin daughters and wants to begin her long-deferred career as a hairstylist. But Steven won't hear of it. It seems as if everyone else has learned how to live. while Maggie has only learned where she's going to end up after she dies.

To make matters worse, Maggie's twenty-year high school reunion is Just around the corner and her long-lost high school boyfriend is back in town. It's not easy for Maggie to sort out her feelings, however, when she has to contend with rampant small-town gossip, surly daughters, and a grandmother who's made it her life's work to keep an eve on Maggie. If only she could see into the future, there is the hope of a second chance at life. In this tender and funny story about friendship, self-worth, family, and unbreakable ties, Maggie Sweet discovers that she has the strength to be her own woman.

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Minthorn Stacy, a native of Michigan, married a Southerner right out of high school, had four children, and at various times worked as a salesclerk, a waitress, and a respiratory therapist. She does not style hair. A humor columnist for several newspapers, she has published articles in national women's magazines and regional anthologies. She and her husband ilve in Mooresville, North Carolina. Maggie Sweet is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

The eponymous protagonist of this homespun debut is a 38-year-old North Carolina housewife who has resigned herself to her boring, small-town existence until she suddenly realizes that she has been "sleepwalking," waiting for her husband (or someone else) to give her permission to make a "real life" on her own terms. Maggie has felt off-kilter since she broke up with her high school sweetheart, Jerry Roberts, and on the rebound married stiff, authoritarian Steven Presson, who had been her 10th grade biology teacher. Now the parent of bickering twin teenage daughters, Maggie feels she is little more than "homeroom mother and queen of the kitchen sink." The catalyst for change is Maggie's discovery that Steven has used their vacation money to buy side-by-side cemetery plots. Then she hears that Jerry will be in town for their upcoming 20th high school reunion. After a lifetime of obedience to family and society, Maggie suddenly realizes that she will never realize her dream of becoming a cosmetician, or of experiencing real love, unless she allows herself to step outside the boundaries and follow her heart. When Maggie reencounters Jerry, he is older, wiser and divorced, and the attraction between them is still potent. Maggie's transformations lead her to discover, and pursue, what she really wants: a career as a hairstylist, a new place to live and true love. By the novel's end, several characters have dramatically changed the course of their lives. Stacy has a light touch with her material, capturing the provincial ambiance of Poplar Grove, N.C., and populating Maggie's world with simple, chatty friends and quirky family members--who, however, sometimes veer toward caricature. While the theme of a woman rediscovering herself in midlife is familiar, this sweet-spirited book (winner of the publisher's 1999 Carolina Novel Award) offers a folksy, humorous depiction of growth and awakening in a Southern setting. (Sept.) FYI: Banks Channel's first Carolina Novel Award winner, How Close by Susan Kelly, was bought by Warner Books for $100,000 and reissued in 1998.

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060197285
• ISBN 13: 9780060197285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224