Sleeping at the Starlite Motel: And Other Adventures on the Way Back Home »

Bailey White teaches elementary school in south Georgia, her writing has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, and her bestselling book Mama Makes Up Her Mind was nominated for the Southern Book Award and the ABBY Award. She is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All things Considered.

Anyone who has read her bestseller Mama Makes Up Her Mind—or who has heard her on National Public Radio—knows that Bailey White is one of the keenest observers of Southern eccentricity since Mark Twain. Sleeping at the Starlite Motel revives White's reputation as a master storyteller, Southern division, as it catalogs the oddities of the Georgia town she knows so well.

Library Journal

In the South, someone is called an "embroiderer" if they tend to tell true stories with more than a little poetic license. In White's earlier collection (Bailey White: An Interesting Life, Audio Reviews, LJ 2/15/93) it was hard to tell where the truth left off and the embroidery began. Some of the stories in Sleeping at the Starlite Motel, however, have visible if lovely stitches. Still, White's Austenesque observations remain clear-eyed and dead on the mark. As before, her everyday characters are extraordinarily memorable. There's Nockerd Sockett, whose cheerful triumph over earlier tragedies crumbles under the weight of false accusation. There's the fruit-tree man, Red the rat man, and Great-Great Aunt Rose and her exquisite shroud. This gem of a collection, ably read by the author, is sure to have wide appeal and should absolutely be in every library collection.-Reilly Reagan, Putnam Cty. Lib., Cookeville, Tenn.