About this item
In this sequel to Amy Hill Hearth's "funny and charming" (Publishers Weekly) debut novel, Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society, the eponymous book club reunites one year later, in the late summer of 1964.Their mission: to fight a large development along the tidal river where member Robbie-Lee grew up and where his mother, Dolores Simpson, a former stripper turned alligator hunter, still lives in a fishing shack. The developer is Darryl Norwood, ex-husband of narrator Dora Witherspoon, who returns to Collier County to assist in the battle. An old land deed, the discovery that one of the key characters has been using a false name, and a dramatic court hearing are just a few of the highlights. Not to mention the reappearance of the Ghost of Seminole Joe. Just as Hearth's debut explored the ways we can find a sense of belonging in other people, her latest novel shows how closely tied each of us is to our sense of home - and the conflicts that can arise when our idea of that home becomes threatened. For Darryl, the river is a place ripe for development. For Dora, who's known as the Turtle Lady because she rescues Everglades "snappers," it's a place that belongs to the critters. And for Dolores, former stripper, it's a place to hide from the world ...
About the Author
Amy Hill Hearth (pronounced HARTH) is a New York Times and Washington Post Bestselling Author. She is also a Peabody Award-Winning Journalist. She is best known as the reporter who discovered the Delany Sisters and wrote HAVING OUR SAY, the bestseller adapted for Broadway and film. She specializes in writing books about women, especially forgotten stories and elder wisdom. Her tenth book (and first for middle grade readers) , STREETCAR TO JUSTICE, is the first biography of Elizabeth Jennings, an all-but-forgotten civil rights icon. STREETCAR TO JUSTICE is a Gold Standard Selection of the Junior Library Guild, an American Library Association Notable Children's Book, and the inaugural winner of the Septima Clark Book Award given by the National Council for the Social Studies in recognition of "the most distinguished young reader non-fiction book depicting women's issues globally." Published January 2, 2018 by the Greenwillow Books Imprint of HarperCollins, STREETCAR TO JUSTICE earned starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. HAVING OUR SAY: THE DELANY SISTERS' FIRST 100 YEARS, was Ms. Hearth's first book. Published in 1993, it was a New York Times bestseller for more than two years and the winner of numerous awards. Called a classic oral history by Newsweek magazine, HAVING OUR SAY is the story of two centenarian sisters whose father was born into slavery. Hearth's other nonfiction books include the story of a pair of married Holocaust survivors who worked for the Underground during World War II, and a rare oral history of a contemporary female Native American Elder whose name was 'Strong Medicine.' Ms. Hearth is also the author of two feminist-historical novels published by Simon & Schuster/Atria Books: MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE COLLIER COUNTY WOMEN'S LITERARY SOCIETY (2012) and MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE LOST HEIRESS OF COLLIER COUNTY (2015) . The novels explore the tensions of life in a small, sleepy town in Florida in the early 1960s. Both novels have been published in five languages to date.
