Excerpt from In Full Bloom by Caroline Hwang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She nodded. She must have recently reconnected with the Ohs; otherwise she would have tried to set me up with Bob instead of the guy in Ohio. There was nothing like a single daughter to motivate you to hunt down old friends. I shuddered to think how many others she'd looked up.

"I think you wasted your money flying out here. I doubt we'll like each other."

"Don't say that. You don't know."

The summer my father left and my mother started working, I occasionally spent afternoons at the Ohs' house. I didn't mind playing with Bob when no one else was around, but he was always after my dolls. He also picked his nose.

"I know."

She opened her mouth, then closed it, thinking better of whatever she was going to say.

Wagging her head, she instead said, "Even so, it not wasted trip. I stay until I get you a husband."

I waited for her to laugh, wink, give some sign she was only joshing.

It didn't come. I looked back at her suitcase. She was her own boss at the real estate company; she could stay indefinitely.

I closed my jaw to speak. "How many men do you have lined up?"

She refused to look me in the eye.

"Mother?"

"Let's talk later. Like you said, you gotta go to work." She put an arm around my waist and bussed me on a spot just below my shoulder--that was where she came up to on me.

"No, let's talk now."

"No, later. You have to get ready." She started to push me in the back, steering me toward the bathroom. I tried to resist her, but she was stronger, and then she started to tickle me. She knew all my soft spots.

Reprinted from In Full Bloom by Caroline Hwang by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2003, Caroline Hwang. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.