SummaryWith a ringing phone, Jeanne Ray's charming and amusing
new novel gets off to a rollicking start that never lets
up. Not for a
minute. On the other end of the phone is Caroline's
daughter, Kay,
a public defender like her father, sobbing at the
improbably good
news that the richest, most eligible boy in Raleigh, North
Carolina,
has asked her to marry him. While Caroline and Tom are
trying to
digest this, the other phone, the "children's line,"
rings; it is
Caroline's sister, Taffy, hysterical over her husband's
decision to
leave her for a woman two years younger than her daughter.
Soon Taffy is wending her way up from Atlanta to seek
solace in
her sister's home, even though the two have been separated
by
more than just geography for the past forty years. With
her is her
little dog, Stamp, who has a penchant for biting ankles
and
stealing hearts. Tom and Caroline quickly realize that the
wedding
their future son-in-law's family is envisioning for nine-
hundred-plus
guests is to be their fiscal responsibility. To top it all
off, the
foundation of their home is in danger of collapsing and
their
contractor and his crew have all but moved in. It's a
thundering
whirlwind of emotion that finally boils down to: Who is in
love with
whom? and Who's going to get the next dance?
Wise, funny, and impossible to put down, Step-Ball-Change
is
peopled with characters you feel you have known your whole
life.
It's the kind of book that you can't bear to see end.
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