“I couldn’t cook but I could sew. It would have been better the other way around.” So begins this witty and transporting new novel by the acclaimed Erin McGraw, introducing us to Nell Plat, who, at age seventeen, finds herself unhappily married and the mother of two baby girls. For a young woman with a hunger for excitement and glamour, Kansas circa 1900 offers nothing but a flat horizon. Still, Nell find some joy sewing and making dresses for women in town. Dreaming over her sewing machine, she begins to entertain ambitions she knows she cannot share.Based on Erin McGraw’s grandmother’s life, here is the story—told in Nell’s own irreverent and wise voice—of what happens when Nell runs away to Los Angeles in the year 1901 as the new motion-picture industry is just taking root. Nell marries again, has a daughter, and goes into business as a costumer in the Hollywood of the Roaring Twenties, renaming herself Madame Annelle. But a knock on the door by her grown daughters, precisely the thing she has most feared, threatens to take apart the new life Nell has so carefully built. Forced to confront the legacy of the life she believed she had shed, Nell struggles to make the right choices the second time around and finds herself truly transformed.In vividly bringing to life the story of Nell Plat, Erin McGraw gives voice to the stories of the countless young women who, unsatisfied with their lives, headed to Hollywood in its heyday. The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard magically recreates that glamorous time and place, and allows us to witness it beautifully dressed, well lit, and close up

Filled with poignancy and insight, this collection of stories interrogates the line between optimism and hopelessness, from the story of a depressed wife who learns a few lessons in happiness from a friend's flaky husband to the priest who becomes a binge eater to stave off his unhappiness. Original.

Product Description: Pastor Kate Gussey, with her husband Ned, provides a home for the homeless, helps build houses for the needy, and turns a willing hand and sturdy good humor wherever there is a need. But when her ex-husband moves into her small town, then into her home, the townspeople begin to question the kind of person she really is...read more

A man calls off his wedding when he thinks he wins the lottery, a radio talk show host's confidence falters when her sexy ex-husband becomes a regular caller, and the loves and deceptions of the Neill family are traced over a thirty year span

Eleven stories deal with marriage, suicide, grief, talk shows, and parents and their adult children