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Published Jun 2010
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As "Mrs. Ro Grandee" she's trapped in a marriage that's thick with love and sick with abuse. Her true self has been bound in the chains of marital bliss in rural Texas, letting "Ro" make eggs, iron shirts, and take her punches. She seems doomed to spend the rest of her life battered outside by her husband and inside by her former self, until fate throws her in the path of an airport gypsy - one who shares her past and knows her future. The tarot cards foretell that Rose's beautiful, abusive husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first.
Hot-blooded Rose Mae escapes from under Ro's perky compliance and emerges with a gun and a plan to beat the hand she's been dealt. Following messages that her long-missing mother has left hidden for her in graffiti and behind paintings, Rose and her dog Gretel set out from Amarillo, TX back to her hometown of Fruiton, AL, and then on to California, unearthing a host of family secrets as she goes. Running for her life, she realizes that she must face her past in order to overcome her fate---death by marriage---and become a girl who is strong enough to save herself from the one who loves her best.
"Readers willing to stick through a slow beginning will be rewarded in Jackson's eventually riveting fourth novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. [A] riveting read that simply flies off the page with prose as luscious as sweet tea and spicy as Texas chili." - Library Journal
"Jackson's sprightly prose and charismatic characters offer readers a rollicking good time along with the typical bromides about domestic abuse." - Kirkus Reviews
"Backseat Saints is an unputdownable story about love, survival, and shedding the past. Rose Mae Lolly is tough, passionate, funny, and fierce, one hell of a heroine to guide us through one hell of an adventure. Any time Joshilyn Jackson is in the driver's seat, I'm along for the ride." - Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog
"Backseat Saints will pull you in and won't let you out until the last page. Raw, tangy and funny, it is an enthralling peek into the secret sorority of mistreated women. Follow the journey of one courageous, witty woman who decides, I'm not going to take this anymore. I love reading about smart, flawed and ultimately wise women, like Rose Mae." - Kathryn Stockett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Help
"From the moment I began reading, I could not put this book down. Rose Mae is an enduring character with a fierce and unstoppable spirit. This is a beautifully written story about an important subject. Pass the word." - Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader and The Map of True Places
This information about Backseat Saints was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: E.V. Jackson
New York Times Bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson is the author of eight novels and a novella: The Almost Sisters, The Opposite of Everyone, Someone Else's Love Story, Gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Backseat Saints, and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty and the novella My Own Miraculous. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages, won SIBA's novel of the year, three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend prize.
A former actor, Jackson reads the audio versions of her novels; her work in this field has been nominated for the Audie Award, was selected by AudioFile Magazine for their best of the year list, has made the 2012 Audible All-Star list for highest ...
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