Flies on the Butter »

Can you ever really go home again?

Rose Fletcher's come a long way from her South Carolina up-bringing of Sunday church and Mamaw's fried chicken. As a high-powered lobbyist in Washington, D.C., Rose has put the South behind her. But the peace and happiness she has sought eludes her. With her marriage on the brink of disaster, her mind races with the chaos her life has become.

Now Rose must head south for home. She'll face her demons, relive her coming-of-age, and confront the issues that have kept her away all these years. It'll take the intervention of strangers and a painful miracle of grace to help her find that place called "home" once again.

Publishers Weekly

Hildreth, author of the popular Savannah series (Savannah from Savannah, etc.), sets her disappointing new stand-alone in a car. When Washington, D.C., lobbyist Rose Fletcher is called home to South Carolina, she takes the long drive as an opportunity to reflect on the mess she's made of her life: she's estranged from her mother; she has deceived her husband, using birth control while pretending to try to get pregnant; and she's been having an affair. Will the trip home give her a new perspective? But of course. The book is organized in flashbacks, each inspired by someone Rose meets during her daylong drive home. This structure is irksome and distracting (as is the question of why a high-powered professional who's attached at the hip to her BlackBerry didn't fly in the first place). Character development is weak, too: Rose's contradictions (a children's rights lobbyist who is too wrapped up in her own career to have kids) can be heavy-handed, and the Southern eccentrics she meets on the way home, such as the wise and fulfilled working-class mom, are caricatures. The happy ending is also predictable. Still, as with many of WestBow's other offerings, this novel is edgier than much Christian fiction, with its frank discussion of adultery and its somewhat subtle, though nonetheless central, treatment of faith. (Feb.)