The Florabama Ladies' Auxiliary and Sewing Circle Paperback - 2002

by Lois Battle

Welcome to Florabama, Alabama-a place where you can stop to sip a co'cola or iced tea and think about money and love. If you had 'em, you were free to think about other things. If you didn't, you couldn't think about anything else.

"We've been screwed blue and tattooed," quips Hilly Pruitt, upon hearing the news of the closing of Cherished Lady, the local lingerie factory where she's worked a lifetime. The same day the plant closes, Bonnie Duke Cullman, former-deb turned Atlanta-society-wife, has herself been downsized-right out of her marriage and picture-perfect life. In an unlikely alliance, Bonnie, Hilly, and the rest of the ex-bra seamstresses join forces in the "Displaced Homemakers Program" at a podunk community college. Together they endure a midlife survival course where the events of a single year forever alter the way they see the world and their places in it.

Hailed as "a fearless novelist" (Pat Conroy) and "a peerless limner of strong, complex women" (Anne Rivers Siddons), Lois Battle creates a rich tapestry of female friendships in this funny, heartfelt, and poignant story about the surprising power of a group of small-town women.

"The book is so full of good stuff it's hard to know where to start. It has a feel of Places in the Heart, a little of Norma Rae, and maybe a touch of Fried Green Tomatoes. But [it] stands on its own as an intelligent, poignant, funny, wistful novel of expectations, love and rebirth." (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

"This is just the kind of book you'd like to take onto the porch of a clapboard house, to read curled up in a wicker chair with a glass of iced tea at your side." (Houston Chronicle)