Review by Booklist Review
When Hazel Marie Puckett and her nine-year-old son, Little Lloyd, show up on Julia Springer's doorstep in Abbotsford, North Carolina, Miss Julia receives the shock of her long and proper life. After 44 years of marriage to pillar-of-church-and-community Wesley Lloyd Springer, she discovers that while she had assumed he was working late at the family bank, he was engaged in other, more carnal, pursuits. For, as Hazel Marie shyly explains, Little Lloyd is Miss Julia's late husband's son. His arrival in Miss Julia's life sets off a chain of events that involves a hypocritical minister, a violent beating, a crooked televangelist, a high-speed car chase, a kidnapping, and a surprising revelation about her late husband's will. Miss Julia not only speaks her mind but also comes to a deeper understanding of the meaning of love, friendship, and trust. First novelist Ross loses control of her material here and there, veering between farce and soap opera, but this is a light and entertaining story, eminently suitable for Jan Karon fans. --Nancy Pearl
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Charming Southern eccentrics breathe life into a predictable story of a proper Presbyterian wife ("Miss Julia") who finds her true self after the sudden death of her husband of 44 years, wealthy but parsimonious banker Wesley Lloyd Springer. Julia is becoming accustomed to the role of rich widow when another shock intrudes: Hazel Marie Puckett appears on the front porch wearing "heels too high, a dress too short, and hair too yellow," with a nine-year-old boy in tow whose "eyes were so much like Wesley Lloyd's it was like looking at her husband before she ever met him." Hazel Marie is on her way to beauty school in Raleigh, N.C., since Wesley senior left no provision for her support, and Miss Julia realizes that she must take her husband's "last legacy" into her home. Meanwhile, her inheritance attracts a variety of small-town opportunists, beginning with Pastor Ledbetter, who insinuates that her departed husband planned to leave his money to the church, then enlists the aid of "Christian psychologist" Dr. Fred Fowler to prove Miss Julia's incompetence in a court of law. Ross's characters resist their stereotypical outlinesÄMiss Julia's black maid, Lillian, might talk like a character from Gone with the Wind, but she provides the strategy for retrieving Little Lloyd Jr. when he's abducted by Hazel Marie's shifty uncle, Brother Vern, a televangelist who also has designs on Miss Julia's money. Miss Julia's luck turns when, ransacking the pantry for Lillian's cache of Oreos, she comes across a Winn-Dixie sack secreted by Little Lloyd, which contains a new will and testament from the dead Lloyd Sr. Along with its homespun appeal, the novel offers an interesting take on gender, race and family in the South; it's fast-paced and funny despite Ross's persistent asides to readers and reference to serious issues (the church's stance on homosexuality and abortion). In the end, Miss Julia's prim self-absorption gives way and she begins to "feel like a real person, saying what she was thinking instead of packing it down inside." Agent, Peter Miller/Delin Cormeny. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An apparent comedy of errors that gradually reveals itself to be a comedy of greed and calculation, by the author of The Pilgrimage (1987). Julia Springer suffered through 44 years of a woebegone marriage before she could spread her wings and emerge as her true self'a merry widow. After husband Wesley's recent death, Julia found that she'd been named his sole beneficiary. Which was a surprise, given Wesley's low opinion of Julia's financial capabilities, but not so astounding as the size of the estate itself. Now a rich woman with no domestic restraints, Julia is set to enjoy the remainder of her years in quiet style, flipping idly through the Neiman-Marcus catalogue as she expertly fends off investment bankers and begging philanthropists. One day, however, her peace is interrupted by a knock on the door: a young woman named Hazel Marie Puckett introduces herself as Wesley's longtime mistress and, before Julia has time to absorb the shock, departs, leaving her nine-year-old son Wesley Jr. on Julia's doorstep. What to make of all this? Julia contacts the police and her lawyer straightaway'and discovers to her horror that everyone in town knew about Wesley's decade-long affair. He had even set up Hazel Marie in a little house, which was not mentioned in the will and from which Hazel Marie and the boy have now been evicted. Furious, Julia decides to take her revenge the only way she knows how: by keeping the boy and acknowledging him as her husband's bastard son. But then the plot thickens. A creepy televangelist, Brother Vern, kidnaps the boy, and Julia and Hazel Marie team up to get him back. Wesley Sr.'s will wasn't so straightforward, after all. And Julia learns from her pastor that she's something called a nymphomaniac. Is there any way out of such a mess? Good-natured entertainment, done with a sharp eye for the details of small-town southern life and domestic melodrama.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
