Start your summer reading early with this feel-good coming of age story taking place in 1960’s Tennessee. Dancing Backward in Paradise: Southern Fiction for Women from the award-winning Vera Jane Cook

by Vera Jane Cook

3.9 stars – 16 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Life for Grace Place is all about sucking on “meat jerkys” and Lenny Bean, her handsome lover. However, Grace’s mother has loftier plans for her daughter. She insists that Grace save her money and move to New York City so she can find fame and fortune as an actress.

Grace works as a cleaning lady for wealthy Betty Ann Houseman so she can pool her pennies for the trip north. Betty Ann has a passion for men more pronounced than her overbite, and it isn’t long before she’s parting the sheets for Lenny Bean. But just before Grace leaves Hixson,Tennessee for New York City, she uncovers an insidious plot: the Bean family is trying to steal Betty Ann’s estate.

Without being able to help Betty Ann, Grace flees to New York, where she faces her darkest hours. In a world of surprises, Grace truly discovers paradise.

“I was just browsing through titles when I found this book and read the few reviews that are there already for DANCING BACKWARD IN PARADISE. On the basis of these reviews, I ordered the book and I simply can’t put it down. This is a novel about a “real” young girl living in an upscale trailer park, her move to New York City to make it “big”, the people she comes to know along the way, and the way she chooses to live her life. She is funny, sensitive, innocent ( though not sexually) and so appealing. I loved her mother with her sometimes odd words of wisdom, and I just can’t recommend this book enough. Why this book isn’t on its way up the best-sellers list, I will never understand, but I’m recommending it to everyone I know. True, Grace has a mouth on her and can be a bit “raunchy” in some of her expressions- but that’s what makes her funny and real. I’m trying to decide whether to suggest this for my Readers Club- if you read it, tell me what you think- Enjoy!” – Amazon Review