Title: Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
Author: Susan Gregg Gilmore
Publication Information: Shaye Areheart Books; 1 edition (January 1, 2008), 296 pps.
Genre: Literature & Fiction/Southern Fiction
Explanation/Summary:
From the back cover: Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.
It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daugther of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.
Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective – and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself – Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.
Analysis and Evaluation:
Yes. This book is the author’s first novel, but it was not evident. Gilmore is a talented writer.
The weakness: I’m hard pressed to find one. This was a great story. I would have liked a different ending, but it wasn’t my story to write.
Sounds good…putting in my request at the library! I bet it will bring back memories of a southern childhood like going to Dairy Queen and that was the ONLY “fast food” in town!