Love and Hot Chicken: A Delicious Southern Novel

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.

The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood.The line snaked around the building far as you could see, a real parade of diversity hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.

When PJ Spoon returns home for her beloved daddys funeral, she doesnt expect to stick around. Why abandon her PhD program at Vanderbilt for the humble charms of her hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee She tells herself its to help her brokenhearted Mamma, but PJs own hearts not doing too good either. She impulsively takes a job as a fry cook at Pennywhistles beloved Chickie Shak, where locals gather for Nashville-style hot chicken.

Then fate shakes up PJs life again. While the town rallies around the terribly retro and terribly fun Hot Chicken Pageant, PJ finally notices her cute redheaded coworker Boof, a singer-songwriter with a talent as striking as her curly hair.

While PJ and Boof fall for each other, Boofs search for her birth mothera Pennywhistle nativecatapults the budding couple into a mystery that might be better left unsolved. When the Chickie Shak pageant takes off, old rivalries and new friendships in Pennywhistle lead to unexpected fireworks, and new beginnings.

Author Bio

Mary Liza Hartong lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She alsoholds a master'sfrom Dartmouth in Creative Writing and a master's from the University College Cork in British and American Literature via Fulbright grant. Mary Liza is the aunt of five boisterous nieces and a proud member of the queer community. When she's not writing, you can find her combing yard sales for treasures with her fiance, Bridget. Love and Hot Chicken is her first novel.